M m

M.

Latin, Marcus. A praenomen, typically abbreviated when writing
the full tria nomina.

M'.

Latin, Manius. A praenomen, typically abbreviated when writing
the full tria nomina.

M, m, µ

Mass. Often, in problems involving only two masses, subscripts are
avoided by using m for the smaller and M for the larger mass. In many-body
mechanics problems, it is conventional to use M for the total mass (the mass
the appears in Newton's equation for the center-of-mass motion). By Newton's
Third Law, the center of mass acceleration depends only on external forces.

In a two-body problem, M = m1 + m2.
In two-body problems involving only central forces, the center-of-mass and
relative motions are independent. The equations of motion of the individual
particles can be combined to yield a trivial equation of motion for the center
of mass (zero acceleration) and an equation of motion that involves only the
relative separation vector (and its second time derivative). By far the most
common use of μ to indicate mass is in the two-body problem, to indicate the
effective mass of the relative motion:

1 1 1
- = - + -
µ m m
1 2

M

Mature. A movie rating of the MPAA
(q.v.), later renamed GP and finally PG.

M

Mega. SI prefix for million, from a Greek word meaning `big.' (Another instance of this
root is in the name for the last letter of the Greek alphabet, Omega --
for long-oh.)

M

Metal. It is convenient that M is not the chemical symbol for any element,
so it can be used to stand for a generic or unspecified metal (or metal mix),
as in the empirical formula M0.8N0.2 for a typical
metglas (Allied-Signal TM) or splat-cooled
amorphous metal, which typically contains 20% nonmetal (composition is chosen
to hit a eutectic point).

``Splat-cooled'' is a technical term. There's probably a pretentious and
dignified term one uses in making presentations to the
suited species.

Back in the summer after my freshman year, I worked in the induction furnace
``lab'' at what was then called Allied Chemical; I helped cook up alloy
premixes that would later be remelted and splat-cooled. This wasn't a
full-time job, and I was stupid, so I let people know that I was available to
help out on other stuff when I wasn't trying to break
molly with a rubber mallet or again attempting to electrocute myself. One
morning a splat-cooling set-up down the hall exploded -- pieces of quartz
crucible lay all over the floor, some insulating tiles and blocks were charred,
etc. It was an emergency, and helping clean up was easily the most appreciated
thing I did that summer. When the suits stopped by later that day on their
long-planned tour, they never noticed anything amiss.

Ahem. Many of you have written concerning the generic chemical formula
M0.8N0.2 written above. You point out that N is the
symbol of a chemical element, and that might lead to confusion if it is used
to stand for a generic nonmetal also. No problem! It turns out that N stands for nitrogen, which is itself a nonmetal.
See?

Until we develop the postmodern chemistry entry, it may be encouraging to some
of you to know that in the metglas context, the nonmetal was usually
phosphorus (P), boron (B) or
a mix of those, possibly including a little bit of silicon and maybe something
more exotic. Never nitrogen.

While the M's I have seen in chemical formulae have generally represented
metals, as described at the top of this entry, I have to admit that while
cleaning out the garage,
I came upon a paper of N. Washida, H. Akimoto, and M. Okuda, ``HNO Formed in
the H + NO + M Reaction System,'' in The Journal of
Physical Chemistry, vol. 82, no. 21 (October 19, 1978), pp.
2293-2299. There M can be any of He, Ne, Ar, Kr, H2, N2,
CO2, N2O, H2O, and SF6, and that's
not an exhaustive list. Here M is any room-temperature gas species that does
not participate chemically in the reaction. So M
here really refers to a mass. The role of the molecular species indicated
by M is obvious: it makes the reaction mechanically possible: In the gas phase,
the H +NO <--> HNO reaction is a two-body problem. Viewed
in the center of mass, the separate species H and NO approach each other with
equal and opposite momenta. Without some additional species, the momentum and
energy constraints are rather tight.

Oh, Lord! At this rate I'm never going to get the car back in the
garage.

m

Meter. The fundamental metric unit of length. The meter has gone through
a variety of definitions and standards, each designed to agree with the
previous definition to within the precision of the earlier definition at the
time the earlier definition was promulgated. It's always been about as long as
the eighteenth-century French yard that it replaced. For the earliest
definition, see the nmi entry.

Mike. Not an abbreviation here, just the FCC-recommended ``phonetic
alphabet.'' I.e., a set of words chosen to represent alphabetic
characters by their initials. You know, ``Alpha Bravo Charlie ... .''
The idea behind the choice is to have words that the listener will be able
to guess at or reconstruct accurately even through noise (or narrow
bandwidth, like a telephone).
Mike is the most stupid letter name in the phonetic alphabet,
because in noise it can be mistaken for bike or night.

Use Mojave.

M

Latin: Mille, `Thousand.' Roman numeral
for one thousand. Still used to designate 1000 sheets of paper. See I entry for Roman-numeral links and explanations. The
mile is etymologically related (videmi.). Lower-case m
(q.v.) is used in the SI.

m

SI prefix milli-, meaning one thousandth, from Latin
Mille, `Thousand.' In the original version
of the metric system, Latin roots were used for
fractional prefixes (deci-, centi-, milli-) and Greek for large multiples (deka-, hecto-, kilo-, mega-). Where two
prefixes began with the same letter (d or m, in particular), the multiple
(Greek) could be capitalized. (This had the advantage that it was also more
accurate, since upper-case Greek characters more frequently coincide with the
Roman characters we write in: upper case µ is M. This Greek/Latin system
of numerical prefixes broke down with micro, and after borrowing from all over
the place, the SI is just making up prefactors
chosen mostly for the convenience of their abbreviations.

M

Mismatch. M is often used as the variable name for a mismatch factor or
divisor. A mismatch factor is intended to correct the value of some quantity
measured under particular test conditions, so as to predict the value of that
quantity under field, normal-operation, or other condition of interest.

I should mention Miss Match,
a 2003 TV series starring Alicia Silverstone as a divorce lawyer who does
matchmaking on the side, and of course she has her own personal romantic
difficulties (anyone could write the project proposal for this). Okay, I
mentioned it.

M

Mobile. The Intel Pentium M series chips are specifically designed for
laptop computers. AMD laptop chips are designated
with the word Mobile.

M

Molar. This is a moderately unusual measurement unit, or symbol, since
its name is an adjective. There are various measures of concentration in
chemistry, and for liquid solvents, molarity is a very common one. The
molarity is defined as

moles of solute
------------------
liters of solution

so the units are built into the definition, and the molarity is a dimensionless
quantity. In fact, one can say ``the molarity is 0.001'' and be understood,
but one is more likely to hear ``the concentration is 1 millimolar.'' In the
second phrase, one doesn't really know what ``concentration'' means until one
hears the unit. The concentration the speaker has in mind might be molality or
normality, or any other of the 8 or so different concentration definitions in
common use. These different measures give equivalent information, in the sense
that any single given value of molarity corresponds to a single value of
molality. (For dilute aqueous solutions, the molarity and molality are about
equal.) On the other hand, in order to make the conversion between
concentration measures one needs more or less detailed information about the
solvent, the solute, and how they interact.

I should add immediately that the quoted phrases above were chosen to highlight
a distinction. More commonly, one would say ``it's a 1 millimolar solution,''
so ``molar'' is used as an adjective. It's my impression that the natural
language used by chemists tends to avoid situations that force the word
molar to be a noun (don't think of teeth), but there is a real issue
here. For purposes of comparison, consider length. You can say ``the length
is 5 m,'' and clearly 5 m is the value of the length and not the kind
of length being discussed, so 5 m is a noun. That 5 m can function
as a noun is clear from its occurrence in a phrase like ``5 m of pipe.''
(Of course, one can also use 5 m as an adjective. One can even say ``a
5 kg length of pipe,'' though this ``length'' is not the abstract quantity
that has a value, but a concrete thing with various properties. Thus, one can
say of a particular 5 m length of pipe it has a 5 cm o.d.,
whereas giving the width of an abstract 5 m length is meaningless.
Another indication comes from the fact that English does not inflect predicate
adjectives for number, so the expression ``the length is five meters'' implies
that meters in this context is a noun.)

MaríA. A common Spanish
abbreviation. It has been such a common name that variants based on it are
also common names. Sometimes a name will be written out with María
abbreviated and one other given name (or more) not abbreviated, indicating that
the person is not called María except perhaps formally. (In the
preceding sentence, the ``person'' may not be implicitly female. There are
common Spanish men's names compounded from María, like Juan María.
In such cases, however, the abbreviation is mostly just an abbreviation and
doesn't carry as much usage guidance; at least, when a Juan María is
called by a single Christian name, it's not likely to be María.)

A disused María may occur in two ways that I can think of. It may be
one of multiple given names that a child is saddled with (like ``María
Elena Isabela...'') or it may be part of a María epithet like
María del Rosario. (See
gender of Spanish women's
names for other examples.)

MA

Markov Analysis. Quantitative analysis of a system's time evolution, based
on two assumptions or conditions:

At any given moment (continuous-time Markov) or at a sequence of
moments (discrete-time Markov) a system can be completely described by
the statement that it is in a particular state. (By choosing a
sufficiently complete description, this condition can usually be
satisfied for any well-understood physical system, in principle.)
MA is usually applied statistically, to ensembles of systems, and one
studies the time evolution of a probability distribution. The states
that a single system can assume are the possible arguments of the
probability distribution. In other words, one studies the probability
that the system is in a particular state, and how that probability
varies in time.

The system evolves from one moment by making state transitions at
a rate that depends only on the initial state. This is a highly
restrictive assumption, but it holds to a greater or lesser degree of
accuracy for many interesting systems, and it makes the problem
solvable.

By the second assumption, a Markov process is described by a linear,
first-order time-evolution equation -- a first-order differential equation
for a continuous-time process, a first-order difference equation for a
discrete-time process. Any such equation has a formal solution that can be
written down trivially. However, evaluating the formal solution is not trivial.
In the simplest case, a Markov process with a finite number of states, this
involves evaluating the exponential of a finite-order matrix of transition
rates or transition probabilities (in continuous- and discrete-time cases,
resp.). If the system can assume an infinite number of states, one must
evaluate the exponential of an appropriate infinite-order generalization of a
matrix.

Ordinary Markovian analysis assumes transition rates or probabilities
independent of time. If these vary in time, it is still possible to write a
formal solution using time-ordering operators of the sort developed for
quantum field theory.

MA

Mask Aligner. A standard piece of optical equipment for photolithographic
processes used in microelectronics fabrication.

In 1998, the total value of M&A in the EU was $600 billion; in 1999 it was
$1200 billion. I have no idea how these numbers are handled when they involve
parties outside the EU.

MA

Middle Ages. When they begin or end is a question best avoided if
possible.

The word you often screw up the spelling of is medieval or mediaeval. Mnemonic: co[a]eval.

The Middle Ages is divided into two parts: the Early
Middle Ages (that comes first) and the Late Middle
Ages (that comes last). It's not divided into three parts because ``Middle
Middle Ages'' would sound silly.

.ma

(Domain code for) Morocco.

MA

Multiple Access. This is a synonym of multiplex[ing|ed], and an excuse to
add a vowel to your acronym. See, for example, CDMA or DAMA.

MAA

Manufacturers' Aircraft Association. A short-lived US industry
organization founded in 1917 as the Aircraft Manufacturers' Association. After
the US entered WWI, the association drew up a cross-licensing agreement to
allow manufacturers to have unrestrained use of airplane patents for war
production. Some time later the name was reordered, and in 1918 or 1919 the
MAA was dissolved. See ACCA.

MAgnesium and ALuminum hydrOXide. These two weak bases [Al(OH)3 and Mg(OH)2]
are the active ingredients in the antacid. Other antacids, like Gelusil and
Mylanta, use the same active ingredients and add simethicone (an
antiflatulent). Di-gel contains those three ingredients plus magnesium
carbonate [MgCO3], a weak basic salt.

The active ingredient in Rolaids is a weak base with a long name, if not a
strong one: aluminum sodium dihydroxy carbonate
[AlNa(OH)2CO3].

The two ``-Seltzer'' products include bicarbonate of soda (sodium bicarbonate
in the newfangled name; NaHCO3 in either case) and citric acid.
Alka-Seltzer has aspirin as well. (Regarding the ``alka,'' see the entry for
alkali. Bromo-Seltzer in its original
formulation had a bromide. Today it contains the analgesic acetaminophen.

MACintosh. An underpowered PC in an unbusinesslike box, with a GUI that used to be innovative, a darling keyboard with cute little keys that are just sooo
perfect for dainty little fingers, a pretty little
one-button mouse that's smooth and round so it feels the same whether you're
holding it straight or cockeyed or throwing it across the room in frustration,
and many other delightful features. The sentimental favorite.

Awwww -- in August 2005, Apple came out with a mouse that has more than one
button. Apparently, they're working hard to stay ahead of Windows and Unix
which didn't have three buttons, or two buttons and a scroll wheel, until, uh,
well, whenever.

MAC

Maximum Allowable Concentration.

MAC

Medium Access Control. Via MAU, of course.
Medium here is not the ordinary adjective nor the extraordinary
psychic, but just the singular of media. Most people expand it
``Media Access Control.''

Mycobacterium
Avium Complex. Bacterial infection found in HIV
positives with T4 counts below 50/ml. Related to tuberculosis. Can cause
fever, weight loss, and chronic diarrhea. This is a way to lose weight but
good, but it's not a good way to lose
weight.

maca

The native and common name of Lepidium meyenii, an herb native to the high
Andes. You want to know more? I know no more. See
the Wikipedia entry for
maca. Go ahead! I ain't proud. Y'all come back now, ya hea'? You
wanna some back an' try our our delicious Macca entry
laytah'!

(No, there isn't any clever joke you're missing in the previous paragraph. I
just felt like rolling into the ditch of nonstandard English, and I did.)

Macarena

Earlier this (1996) campaign year, after the Republican convention, retired
General Colin Powell attempted to lay to rest the vicious canard that
African-Americans have a special talent for dance, by personally committing
Macarena. Fortunately, he was mostly hidden by an amazed and horrified crowd.
Acting on her own authority in the emergency, Liddy Dole assured the nation at
a Denver campaign rally on October 29 that her husband should be elected
president because then there would be ``no more Macarena.'' Despite this
irresistible campaign promise, Bob (``too honestly cynical for president'')
Dole is still way behind in the race. [The preceding sentence used to say
``Bob (`the inarticulate') Dole,'' but we reconsidered later in the context of
the presidential Bush league. We also tested ``cynically honest'' before
settling on the current popular choice; we're always fine-tuning the entries to
optimize your looking-things-up experience.]

Update 1998: Bob lost but he found a new career as a bail-bondsman for
Newt Gingrich and a character actor in advertisements.

Update 2000:
After her display of leadership in the Macarena crisis, Liddy Dole was
considered a credible candidate for the 2000 Republican nomination. She
ran a close second in many early (1999) polls, but eventually dropped out.
Focus groups will prove that people were just afraid there'd be a new spate
of Bob Dole erectile insufficiency advertisements if she became president.
Look: Bill and Monica was enough. Change the subject. Let's have some good,
clean, old-fashioned abuse-of-power and election-fraud scandals.

It turns out (don't tell the
glossarist!) that Macca is a common nickname in the UK (or in England, at
least) for anyone (not just Sir Pretty Face) whose surname begins with the
Gaelic prefix Mac or Mc. I guess that in the early or middle twentieth
century, ``Mack'' may have functioned that way in the US.

MACCS

Melcor Accident Consequence Code System. Endorsed by the EPA for modeling air dispersion of radionuclides
following an accidental release not explosively initiated. Cf.ERAD for explosive release.

I might as well warn you now that this entry is under construction,
speculative, and boring. Better read it now before it gets worse.

Machen is a German verb cognate with English make. The ulterior
etymology of these words (beyond proto-Germanic) is uncertain.

The English noun might (the word that has a sense similar to
strength) happens to coincide in sound and spelling with the modal
might (subjunctive form of may), but the words don't seem to have any
etymological relationship. German has a homonym pair: Macht is a noun
also meaning `strength, force, or might' (as in Wehrmacht, `armed
forces' or more literally `war force'). The word macht, on the other
hand, is the 3d-pers. sing. pres. indic. of machen (usage example
below). There doesn't seem to be a relationship between these words either,
besides accidental coincidence.

German and English have another pair of cognates, tun and do,
that like machen and make also have similar meanings. To native
speakers of English, the assignment of meanings to machen and tun
can seem a scrambled version of that of make and do. For
example, ``er macht nichts'' means `he does nothing' rather than `he
makes nothing.' Conversely, es tut mir Leid, literally `it does me
sorrow,' means `I'm sorry' -- something like `it makes me sorry.' Probably the
simplest thing one can say about the situation is that machen is a
broader term than make in English, in part because there is less
expectation that some thing (Ding) will be made. Crudely, one
can say that machen is used more than tun,
whereas make and do are comparably
common. (It seems that Old English used the etymons of
these words a bit more like German does now, the make etymon being much
more common.)

Okay, I had some other ideas, about fashion effects in language and expressions
like ``make trouble,'' ``make time,'' and ``do time,'' but the articulation is
still embarrassingly vague. I've commented them away for the duration, so we
can get the rest of these entries published.

Here's a peek behind the curtain. I found a clew to pull on: ``The Historical
Development of the Causative Use of the Verb Make with an Infinitive,''
by Jun Terasawa, in Studia Neophilologica, 1985, vol. 57, #2,
pp. 133-143.
Abstract:

The development of the English causative construction with make + an
infinitival complement is examined. Two types of causative V --
agentive causative & pure causative -- are distinguished, differing
in both semantic & syntactic structure. Agentive causatives are
seen to place stricter semantic restraints on causer, causee, &
complement than do pure causatives. It is argued that the make
construction began as a pure causative & later developed into an
agentive causative. 5 Tables, 11 References.

This next one looked promising at first:
``Investigating Learner Vocabulary: A Possible Approach to Looking at
EFL/ESL Learners'
Qualitative Knowledge of the Word.'' [I've quoted the awful title accurately,
but the paper itself is written in fluent English.]
According to the abstract, the study involved ``a contrastive corpus analysis
observing the uses of the high frequency verb make in learner &
native writing...'' and it was published in a journal published in Germany
[IRAL, vol. 39, #3, pp. 171-194 (2001)].
Unfortunately, the researchers (Erik T.K. Liu and Philip M. Shaw) studied only
CSLE's.

Jackpot! ``The Grammatical and Lexical Patterning of make in Native and
Non-Native Student Writing,'' by Bengt Altenberg and Sylviane Granger, in
Applied Linguistics, vol. 22, #2, 173-194 (June 2001). From
the abstract: ``The article focuses on what proves [sic] to be the two
most distinctive uses of make: the delexical & causative uses. Results
show that EFL learners, even at an advanced proficiency level, have great
difficulty with a high frequency verb such as make. They also demonstrate that
some of these problems are shared by the two groups of learners under
consideration (Swedish- & French-speaking learners) while others seem to be
L1-related.''

MACHO

MAssive Compact Halo Object. An aggregation of matter too small to have
been directly (i.e. optically) observed in interstellar space, and
too sparsely dispersed to have been sighted locally, but dense and massive
enough, at least in galactic halos, to explain the amount of
dark matter implied by galactic motion.
Also MAssive Condensed Halo Object. Also the name of an old
collaboration of astronomers that was looking for these critters. (It was
active in the 1990's; as of 2008 it apparently no longer exists.)

A word that has traditionally meant intellectually unsound, the usual
specialized sense of insane. Now it is widely used with the meaning of
angry.

Cicero, in his Tusculan Disputations, quotes Ennius to the effect that
ira initius insaniae -- `anger is the beginning of insanity.'

MAD

Median of Absolute Deviations away from median. A measure of the breadth
of a distribution. Explicitly: given a probability distribution, determine a
median m for the distribution. Now the absolute deviations from this median,
|x-m|, have their own distribution. (If the initial distribution is f(x), then
g(u) = f(m+u) + f(m-u) is a distribution function for the
absolute deviations u > 0.) The median m' of this new
distribution g (i.e. m' is the median value of u) is the MAD. If we
call the first and third quartiles q1 and q3, then m' clearly has a value
between q3-m and m-q1.

Manufacturing Automation and Design Engineering--program of
ARPA, since 1990.

made possible by

An important phrase used in thanking sponsors of TV programs that no
commercial broadcasting executive figured could scrape together an honest
audience and that therefore require the funding of viewers like you.

A program that is ``made possible by'' <name of public-spirited
organization here> clearly would not have been possible without that
organization. Evidently, we're talking metaphysical necessity here. No other
organization could have done it. To you it looks like dollars, but really it
is existential ambrosia. Without that particular organization, the very
existence of the program would have been not endangered, not imperiled, but
completely and utterly nullified and kaput. That's why they didn't say ``made
possible by funding from'' <name of public-spirited organization
here>.

MAxwell's equations using the Finite Integration Algorithm. A program
first created around 1980 to simulate how particle beams move through a cavity
under the influence of RF fields. The code was
developed by Thomas Wieland, using the ``finite integration technique'' (FIT),
starting in 1975 while he was at Technische Hochschule Darmstadt. The original
application was in the determination of the electromagnetic modes of cavities
of arbitrary shape, filled in an arbitrary way with dielectric materials. This
research was first published in 1977.

In 1979 Wieland moved to CERN, where he adapted the numerical method to
other particle-beam problems. Over the next decade he continued to develop the
program, which at some point was dubbed MAFIA. It's well-known code; anyway,
it's not exactly my field, yet I've noticed it mentioned in a couple of places.
Maybe if it had some other name I wouldn't have noticed. In any case, most of
the information in this entry is cribbed from
a 2009
<PhysicsWorld.com> article by Hamish Johnson.

MAG

Monotonic Array Grammar. A kind of picture grammar, q.v..
A subclass in the Chomsky-like hierarchy of isometric array grammars (IAG's).

A tube of approximately rectangular cross section, for storing
and carrying packaged IC's.

A building for storing ammunition.

A rigid tube for storing and carrying bullets; the tube is
approximately rectangular in cross-section and can be clipped into
place for automatic or semi-automatic loading. Also `clip.' Viewed
from the side, the standard clip for an AK-47 looks like a sector of annulus. Hence
the name ``banana clip.''

A piece attached to the end of the magazine spring, separating it from
the cartridges which are pushed upward in the magazine or clip, into the barrel of an automatic
pistol. You were probably thinking of emitter follower. For a picture of a
couple of big guns, including a ``six,'' visit
this page.

Well, there's one each at Oxford and Cambridge Universities. The name is
sometimes pronounced maudlin.
Samuel Pepys was graduated
from Magdalene at Cambridge, and his famous diary ended up there.

According to Foxe's Acts and Monuments, William Tydale went up to Oxford
in Easter term 1510 and was entered of Magdalene Hall, as they used to say.

MAGERT

MAp and GEography Round Table (of the ALA).
Sounds like maggot pronounced in a hyperrhotic accent, so they don't
accept any members from Brooklyn. That's why I got lost trying to escape
Queens one day.

Nickname of Earvin Johnson, Los Angeles Laker who retired when he
discovered that he is HIV-positive, but returned to
play on the 1992 Olympics dream team, and briefly resumed his court career in
1996. And then yet again for a couple of games when he noticed he still hadn't
died yet. You know, basketball is not tiddly-winks; it's violent and people
get cut and bleed, sometimes.

Magic is also the team name of the Orlando, Florida NBA franchise. Orlando's long-time star,
Shaquille O'Neal (more at the
amphorae entry), was recruited to play for the
LA Lakers; they got their magic back. For a while,
anyway. In July 2004, Shaq went back (to Florida anyway, and the Miami Heat).

magic

Perhaps the essence of magic is contained in Arthur C. Clarke's ``Third
Law'':

Ion of an atom which has an incomplete shell of electrons.
Usually refers to transition metal ions with unpaired electrons in 3d,
4d, or 5d shell (in periods IV, V, and VI), which give rise to
paramagnetism and ferromagnetism.

In solids at sufficiently high
temperatures, magnetic ions give rise to paramagnetism.
The spins in a paramagnetic material align (i.e., tend to align, on
average) with the applied magnetic field H, and give rise to a
magnetization M that is parallel to and in the same direction as
H. The total magnetic induction B is therefore larger than
the applied field H.
This behavior is essentially the sum of the behaviors of the individual
atoms, acting more-or-less independently. In paramagnetism, M is
proportional to the applied field, through a proportionality constant
called the susceptibility <chi>: M = <chi>H.

At low temperatures, a qualitatively different magnetic behavior occurs,
which involves a collective interaction of the atoms: the field of an
atom's oriented neighbors is enough to keep it oriented as well. As a
result, there is a spontaneous magnetization M, representing the
self-consistent parallel orientation of atomic spins.
This is the behavior of an individual ``domain,'' which might be 1000
Å for Fe. In large samples, the behavior is complicated by the
interactions among different domains, and hysteresis (history or memory
effects) occur.

There is a qualitative contrast between induced-field effects in magnetism
and electricity: in magnetic materials, the predominant sign of the effect
is paramagnetic -- M reinforces H, while in dielectric
materials it is opposite -- P diminishes the effect of D.
The fundamental reason for this is in the sign of the force between
similar elements: in magnetism, the Biot-Savart or Amperé
(inverse-square) force law between two equal (parallel) current elements
is attractive, while Coulomb's (inverse-square) force law for two equal
charges is repulsive.

Other kinds of behavior occur, although metals with high magnetic-ion
concentrations eventually (at low enough temperature) exhibit
ferromagnetism. The transition from paramagnetism occurs at the
Curie-Weiss temperature TC (capital tee,
sub-cee, if you're not
Netscape-enhanced), and is signaled by a divergence of the susceptibility
as <chi> ~ 1/(T - TC) in the paramagnetic regime.

A centralized server of email messages.
There are essentially two types: discussion groups and newsletters.

A mailing list for a discussion group is a common address to which list
subscribers send a single copy of their message, and from which they
receive a copy of any mails. This kind of system is also called a mail
reflector. Discussion groups can be moderated or not. After political
arguments nearly destroyed ANCIEN-L in 1998, for example, it was
reconstituted as a moderated group, with postings being vetted by one
overworked list owner. The attendant delays destroy some of the immediacy
that unmoderated lists have. An unmoderated list on a decent server can
reflect messages around the world in a few minutes -- i.e., the delays are
just the usual email latencies. A moderated list is occasionally also used
to create a low-traffic announcements list by selection of relevant
messages from a high-traffic list (e.g., classics-m).

A newsletter is essentially an application of a moderated mailing list for
dissemination of an email newsletter. A lot of organizations use moderated
lists to send out advertisements to potential customers, directives and news to
employees, etc.

The traditional mailing-list software is run completely by email commands --
one subscribes, unsubscribes, changes options, accesses archives, etc.,
all by sending a batch job of command lines in an email to the mail server.
These commands are all supposed to be sent to a different address
than regular postings, but a lot of subscribers forget. Listproc, and probably
listserv as well, will bounce back mail that begins with what looks like
a command (the words unsubscribe, set, etc.)

The most common software packages for traditional mailing lists are LISTSERV, ListProc
and MAJORDOMO, in about that order. Trailing
behind are MAILBASE, popular in Britain, and the quite rare MAILSERV (I've
only seen it on vaxen). Mailserv or MailServ is
also the name of a web interface for MAJORDOMO.
This
useful page describes the (generally similar) commands for these five
kinds of mailing lists. The software often recognizes synonyms for the
most common commands, and accepts unambiguous abbreviations (i.e., it
right-completes the command name).

There are now a number of web-based programs that allow mailing lists to
be set up, managed, subscribed to, etc. all via http protocol. The email
protocol is used only to send the mailing list messages. In effect, the
parallel tasks have been transferred from the list processor address to an
http server. A few of these are Cool List, Egroups, which absorbed OneList and which itself has been absorbed
by Yahoo! Groups in early 2001, PostMaster General, Topica, The Vlists Network, Lyris.net and ListBot (associated with MSN). (And in case you're wondering, these aren't in
any coherent order that I can remember or discern any more.)

The most appropriate place for list managers to discuss mailing lists is on
the mailing list
List-Managers, hosted by GCA.

<eList.com>, which sounds like it might be a mailing-list service,
has changed its name to MessageBot!.
It's a ``totally free service keeps track of the emails of people who wish to
be notified of changes to your website.''

MessageBot! can be used to jury-rig a kind of mailing list also: If a site is
set up to archive in web-accessible form the email sent to some address, then
users who sign themselves up to be notified of changes at the site will
effectively be notified in email of additional messages that have been posted
to the site. They've actually automated a process similar to that: a web site
where postings are entered via form (which they describe as ``the user enters
their own email themselves'').

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you own a website, you can sign up for MessageBot, insert the free code
at your website, and invite your visitors to leave their email address in
the MessageBot window at your site.

mail itch

I've heard about this on the radio. They say medicated coal bomb cures
it, but what exactly is ``mail itch''? I
searched the web, but the hits all have some weaseling punctuation between
mail and itch.

I scraped this entry together around 1996. At the time, I thought those radio
ads were a bit crass. Ah, lost innocence!
Wasn't radio personality Steven King, er-- Alan King, er... Mr. King -- wasn't
he hawking ``medicated coal bomb''? Or was it Saul Palmetto? Whatever. Larry has been
married 53 times, each time to a younger female.
(The day he marries an embryo, there will be a constitutional amendment
outlawing abortion for same-sex couples.) I guess you might understand his
obsession with these products. See ED, run.

Not a sequence in time. More like a point in times. Main sequence stars
are stars that conform to a relatively tight luminosity-temperature relation.
At any given time, most visible stars -- 80-90% -- are in the main sequence.
The main sequence was first discovered as an empirical relationship (see H-R diagram). It is now understood to
represent the stable properties of typical hydrogen-burning stars.

Maj.

MAJor. A military rank.

MAJO

The International Monitoring System's (IMS's)
code for the seismic station in Matsushiro, Japan. Probably not too far from MJAR.

MAJORDOMO, Majordomo

A free software package for mailing lists.
It was intended to be and is bare-bones. An indication of this is the fact
that while on LISTSERV and ListProc you switch to the
digest by a set command, in MAJORDOMO you simply unsubscribe
and resubscribe to the parallel digest mailing list. On the other hand,
MAJORDOMO is free. Also, you can't set nomail and remain
on the subscribers list while you're away -- instead you just unsubscribe.
On the other hand, MAJORDOMO is free. There isn't even any support for
archiving of posts. On the other hand, MAJORDOMO is free. (And you can
get the Perl source code and play with it.)

When Samuel B. Trieman (1925-1999) was Director of Graduate Studies in the
Physics Department at Princeton
University, he brought through the first students from the PRC. The university allowed departments to waive the
foreign language proficiency requirement for graduate students who were native
speakers of a ``major world language,'' but didn't define or provide a list
of which languages qualified.

One day, a memo appeared in all the graduate students' mailboxes. In it, Prof.
Trieman declared, by the authority vested in him as Director of Graduate
Studies, that Chinese was a ``major world language.'' No one challenged this
arrogation.

make

An intransitive verb meaning achieve sufficient enrollments to be
offered. Said of elective classes. It might be regarded as a short form
of ``make it'' or ``make the cut'' or both. In high school, third- or
fourth-year language classes often don't make, depending the language and the
school size. If you're a teacher with courses on the bubble, then you've got
to work to ``keep your numbers up.''

or equivalently, since the bond angles and lengths are only drawn approximately
and since structures rotate about single bonds,

H
\
\
O
/
/
Cu
\
\
O
/
/
O == C
\
\
O
/
/
Cu
\
\
O
/
/
H

Green, and very pretty when polished. In English the name dates back to
Anglo-Norman, and stems from the Latin word
molochitis. According to Pliny the Elder, the Latin name was derived
from the Greek word for mallow, a purple-flowered plant. Not only is this
color association puzzling, but it's not clear that Pliny had the same mineral
in mind. Even if Pliny's claim was incorrect for the Latin word, it is correct
(because self-fulfilling) for Modern English. The Anglo-Norman form was
melochite (the changed first vowel reflects medieval Latin usage), but
English (as well as French) has respelled it to conform with the Greek word for
mallow (maláchê). For something about the occurrence of
malachite, see the Fahlerz entry. Another
hydroxy-carbonate copper mineral is azurite.

Malayalam

One of the 22 scheduled languages of India with official language status in
the state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry
(official name since 2006; still better known as Pondicherry). (Regarding the
last: Malayalam is only used in Mahé, the Malayalam district of
Puducherry that is an enclave on the coast of Kerala.

Malayalam diverged from Tamil in the sixth century or earlier, but over time
absorbed a lot of Sanskrit. Supposedly in consequence of this, the Malayalam
alphabet has the largest number of letters among the Indian languages and is
reportedly capable of representing the sounds of all Dravidian languages as
well as Sanskrit. This seems an exaggeration: the script has only 36
consonant letters, and symbols to represent only 16 or 17 vowels. I can
believe that this is enough to represent any of those languages individually,
but only if the individual characters are interpreted differently for different
languages. (Consider just two similar languages like German and English: both
have 12-14 distinct vowels in their standard dialects, but taking, say,
standard German and one standard English pronunciation together, there are
typically about 20 distinct vowels all told.)

Mexican-American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund. What were they thinking? Mal has the same
meaning as a prefix in Spanish as in English,
mal is also an adjective and noun meaning `bad, evil.' The job of their
``education department'' is to educate
parents in how to press for implementation or enforcement of court orders
and legislation pushed by their ``legal department.''

Mary insisted on reading me this passage, and now I insist on transcribing.
Don't fight it. You know you want it. You can't resist -- and you shouldn't.
You pulse with anticipation. Afterwards, suddenly,

... he realized he hadn't even gotten fully undressed. As her feet hit the
floor, the ruined nightgown dropped to her feet. She looked up at him.

``I'm sorry. I was too rough. Did I hurt you?''

``No, I can honestly say that what you did to me didn't hurt at
all.''

What a gift for graceful description and realistic dialogue! What subtle
allusion! And no, ``his male masculinity'' isn't in that particular purple
passage. But I remember. I remember Mary holding its pinkness (the book's
cover) and reading and reading and how from between my teeth I let out a
hoarse, longing moan (okay, it was actually more of a contemptuous laugh) and
how I felt and--oh! I felt amused. But now I can't find the right sex scene
(the bit above is at p. 201), and anyway the book is pretty homogeneous pulp, so I'm sure you can enjoy
similar gems elsewhere as you stalk this one. (We're talking about The Bare
Facts by Karen Anders, from the Harlequin B series, B putatively standing
for Blaze. Price: $1 at the dollar table.)

malgastar

A Spanish verb meaning `misspend.' In
English, the verb waste has as one of its meanings a forceful expression
of misspend. In Spanish there is no common alternative, so
malgastar covers the entire semantic range covered by the two English
verbs.

mall hair

Large bangs held up with hair spray, with wings and everything.

malloc()

Memory ALLOCat{ion|e}. A C-language operator.
Memory allocated with malloc() should be deallocated with free(). In C++, use new() and delete(). It's advertised as being a
lot cleaner. The brand-x comparison I've seen is

int *x = (int*)malloc(20*sizeof(int));
...
free(x);

becomes

int *x = new int[20];
...
delete x;

Mam.

Latin, Mamercus. A praenomen,
typically abbreviated when writing
the full tria nomina.

MAM

March, April, May. Aggregated Spring data. Please don't tell me
it should be AMJ. Anyway, it's climatological data from the Julian-calendar
era in the instance of this initialism that instigated this glossary entry. At
the time, Spring sprang sooner (eleven days sooner by 1600). Cf.DJF, JJA,
SON.

Step-mother. Technically, this is Japanese, but
it sort of works in a lot of European languages. In the Japanese, haha
is `mother' and mama- is `step-.' Stepfather is mama-chichi
(stop giggling or I'll tell your mother!) and stepchild is mamako (see
-ko for more on the last syllable).
Incidentally, the hyphens are just guides to the Anglophone eye. (There's a
concept.) In Japanese, hyphenated words don't have hyphens (haifun) in
them. How weird is that? Japanese doesn't use word spacing either,
butforyourconveniencewegenerallydo.

The common European word mama is now recognized world-wide, even where
no European language is a common first language. For example, it occurs in kyoiku-mama.

Mama seems to naturalize well. A woman who spoke mainly Yoruba growing
up in Nigeria wasn't sure if the word was Yoruba or not. (It isn't.) I was
asking around because Roman Jakobson claimed something like that the word for
mother in all languages contains a nasal consonant. This is a trickier claim
than it at first seems, because many languages have multiple words for mother,
but it's easy to find counter-examples. I think
Georgian is one.

MAMI

Multicultural
Association of Medical Interpreters of Central New York.
``MAMI has established a fee-for-service, not-for-profit language bank (agency)
in Utica, N.Y. It offers professional interpreting services and translation of
health-related documents to Oneida and Herkimer counties and, eventually, all
of Central New York.'' I suspect that the name
Al Jolson doesn't ring a bell
with these people.

Metropolitan Area Network. A Local Area Network (LAN) serving a range over 100 miles.

m.A.n.

meiner Ansicht nach. German, `in my opinion'
[IMO]. German has two postpositions, nach
and weder, that function like prepositions but happen to follow their
objects. Do not confuse the expansion of m.A.n. with that of m.M.n., which means about the same thing, or you'll
end up with something like meiner Ahnung nach, which means `according to
my intuition.'

MANA

Mid-Atlantic Nanotechnology Alliance.

management

The identification, specification, allocation, and coordination of tasks
that will not be done.

man bites dog

This is a traditional definition-by-example of what news is: a report of
an unusual event. A usual event (dog bites man) is not news. (It's human
interest, and can be reported only if it helps the reporter score a political
point.)

Most instances of the phrase ``dog bites man'' that occur in new reports are
metaphorical. Nevertheless, the literal event does occur fairly regularly.
One very common situation is that of criminal fugitives biting police dogs.
The second-most common situation seems to be that of pet owners
counter-attacking dogs that attack their own dogs -- dog's best friend 'n'all
that. (For another sort of canine anthropomorphic dog fight, see the
It was a dark and stormy night entry.)
We'll be collecting examples of canine man-bites (whether they involve criminal
fugitives or not) and listing them here:

Miami, Florida, December 19, 2001: 28-year-old Dana Michael Murphy
was hiding out in an abandoned car, drunk, after rear-ending a car in
Pompano Beach and fleeing the scene. He was discovered by Vader, a
96-pound German shepherd with the Broward Sheriff's Office.
(Vader was named after Star Wars' Darth Vader.)
``Soon as I saw him pull the dog into the car, I knew it
was a bad situation for the dog,'' said Sheriff's Deputy Frank Maio,
Vader's handler. Vader suffered man-bites to the back of the neck and
around the right eye. After the attack, he was placed on antibiotics.
He also had to be treated with eye drops, and though he was able to
return to work the next day, Maio said he'd be taking it a little
easier for a while.
The attacker also suffered bites, and also was not ``put
down.'' He was treated at the North Broward Medical Center before
being taken to jail, where he was held on charges of driving under the
influence, leaving the scene of an accident, driving with a suspended
license, burglary, resisting with violence, injuring a police dog (a
third-degree felony), and a couple of other charges.

Braunschweig, Germany, October 2002: a man bit his own dog on the
nose. Because of the town name, this incident achieved recognition in
our Nomenclature is destiny
entry. Details can be found there.

Man may also bite dog that is already dead and probably cooked. Back in 2002,
the World Cup was held in South Korea and there was a flurry of reporting about
dogs as food there. Of course, that wasn't news at all. The South Koreans
just need to work out a mutually beneficial agreement with the Australians (see
dogger).

Michael Vick was a talented quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons until just
before the beginning of the 2007-08 season. Unbeknownst to him, treacherous
family and friends had been running a dog-fighting operation on his property.
As a non-participant, his pseudonym was Ron Mexico. A Finnish fan of US
football, it appears, has ransacked the gazetteer to offer a web-based
``Ron Mexico name generator''
here. He must have the right algorithm: it satisfies the only known
condition. Oh wait-- I'm sorry, that was his alias in the genital herpes thing
a few years before. After the court papers were filed, there was a brief vogue
in sports gear bearing the name. There was even a poor fellow in Brighton,
Michigan, an auto-parts supplier, who comes by the name legitimately. He was
``getting a ton of calls.'' He wanted to know, ``How do you pull a name like
that out of the air? Use Bob Smith or Jim Johnson; there's 50 million of them.
Out of all the names in the whole world, I wanna know how he picked this name
out.'' It reminds me of Tonya Harding's ex. This Ron Mexico knows two others
-- relatives of his. You can see where this is going: ``To Tell The Truth,''
2022. The rollicking panel of washed-up celebrities will consist of Sean Penn,
Christina Aguilera, Ben Affleck, and Kitty Carlisle, somehow.

Anyway, Michael Vick is not alleged to have bitten any of the dogs or given
them genital herpes, but he's supposed to have killed some of them in
unnecessarily creative ways. (I didn't even know you could kill a dog by
hanging. Not very quickly, anyway....) On August 27, Vick took a plea bargain
and reported a Jesus sighting. (He claimed he found Jesus, but I'm not sure
Jesus had been reported missing. I heard he was expected back.) The reason
the story merits discussion in this entry, besides the general association with
dogs, news, and violence, is the chew-toy angle. By the time of Vick's plea,
there was a ``Vick's Dog Chew
Toy'' available online for $10.99 plus $2
S&H, ``made of state of the art `dog' material''
whatever that is. Melamine-laced and lead-base-painted, I imagine. With so
little time to set up the tooling, shipping wasn't scheduled to begin until
September 7, 2007.

The situation of a man biting a dog is a paradigm of the unexpected, but it has
not always been used to define news. Relevant evidence was posted on the
Curculio blog, which had an anonymous
ancient Greek couplet on April 20,
2006. (You remember, of course, that Cerberus is a three-headed dog.)
In translation: ``Even as a corpse Timon is savage: Cerberus, door-keeper of
Pluto, be afraid lest he bite you.''

Multiple ANalysis of COVAriance (ANCOVA).
MANCOVA is a combination of linear regression and multiple analysis of
variance (MANOVA) in which the MANOVA is adjusted
for the linear relationships between the dependent variables and the
covariates. See, for example, M. J. Norusis, SPSS for Windows: Advanced Statistics, Release 6.0.
(Chicago, IL: SPSS, 1993).

Not just an acronym; this would make a pretty decent family name.

Mandate of Heaven

A Chinese imperial doctrine that in late twentieth and early twenty-first
century Florida and Texas
governs the like-unto-a-god status of football coaches. If a coach use his power wisely and send in
just plays, then his victories demonstrate that his benevolent but firm rule is
righteous. If he have a losing season, then it demonstrates that he has lost
the mandate of heaven, and may be ignominiously tossed out on his ear, or
disemboweled, as the mob choose.

Similar Confusion philosophies are followed in the other seven states of the
Southeastern Conference (Alabama, Auburn, Clemson, Georgia, Louisiana,
Mississippi, and South Carolina).

A Spanish word that means `to handle' in
Spain. In Latin America, the
word is used in the sense of `to drive [a vehicle]' (or to know how to).
Cf.maniobra, discussed at the maneuver entry.

maneuver

Also spelled manoeuvre (``chiefly
Brit.,'' as we lexicographers say). I assume you know what this word
means. My feeling is that if you have to turn the steering wheel or your
shoulders one way and then another, then that's a maneuver, but only one way is
just a turn.

Spanish has the nounmaniobra and verb maniobrar, with meanings similar to the English
cognate. Cf.manejar.

Spanish: `hand-to-hand.' As in combat.
NOT `man-to-man' with Spanisho lettero o-o. Sheesh!

Okay, okay: it does so happen that the English word man and the Spanish
word mano (< Latinmanus) are
derived from the same Indoeuropean (IE) root *man-
that has the meanings `person' and `hand.' One might regard this as an
instance of synecdoche (hand
representing man), but from the available linguistic evidence it is
impossible to tell which, if either, meaning came first.

In fact, ``mano a mano'' can express, in a figurative way, a range of
meanings like `on an equal footing,' some of which overlap the sense of
`man-to-man.' There are lots of other such expressions. For example, mano
en mano, literally `hand in hand,' means that or `pari passu'; de
mano en mano means `from hand to hand' (literally `from hand into hand').

The Latin word manus is not, as one might suppose at first glance, a
second-declension masculine noun. It's a fourth-declension feminine noun.
Hence the Spanish word mano (like Frenchmain, etc.) is feminine.

manobra

Spanish word meaning `laborer'
(obrador) or day-laborer
(peón). More about manobra at the manobre entry. Right now I want to write
about something different: the front-loading of the Spanish alphabet.

El Diccionario del Español Actual (edd. Manuel Seco, Olimpia
Andrés, Gabino Ramos), publ. 1999, is a good, representative Spanish
dictionary. It has two volumes: A-F and G-Z. The two volumes are similar in
size, and there isn't very much front matter. The disproportionate share of
words starting with early letters of the alphabet is typical. (Not that it
wouldn't be very suspicious if it weren't.) In contrast, the xx-volume OED2 has a volume xi that begins with the
Scrabble-worthy word
ow, whatever that means. For my own amusement (you should skip
over this to the next entry), I'm going to list the number of pages dedicated
to words starting in different letters of the alphabet in the Spanish
dictionary mentioned above (this one alphabetizes ll between lk and lm, etc.):

Spanish word synonymous with manobra, `laborer.' The word (in both
forms) is grammatically male. One can think of this as natural gender when the
word originated, and conventional gender now. Of
course, Spanish nouns ending in a are generally female. While there
are exceptions, these often have Greek roots (e.g.: el tema,
`the theme'; el siquiatra, `the [male] psychiatrist') rather than
obviously Latin roots like
obra and mano (see mano a mano). So the switch in ending
is natural: either those hearing the word for the first time were led to
suppose the word ended in e, or people familiar with the -a form felt
uncomfortable enough with the final -a to use -e instead.

Yes, there are interesting questions here of what to do about conflicts of
natural and grammatical gender, but this here is (a tangent to)n
what I started writing about, where n is four or five, so that'll have to wait.
I'd also like to mention manubrio, but I
can't think what to say about it.

mano de obra

Spanish word meaning `manpower' or a
restricted sense of the word `labor.' That is, the labor force (fuerza
obrera) represents available manpower (mano de obra), and a finished
product represents a certain amount of labor performed (also mano de
obra). The
French etymon main-d'œuvre, attested
as early as the end of the seventeenth century, is used in the same way. An
interesting oddity about these phrases is that they literally seem to mean
something like `hand of labor.' A better translation might be `labor hand'
(like ``farm hand'').

All these thoughts on hands in some genetic relationship to labor remind me
``of horny-handed sons of toil.'' No, the first of doesn't belong
inside the quotation marks, but it makes a nice iambic tetrameter. The
phrase sounds like something Carl Sandburg would have made up, but the idea
that the working poor (anachronistic-term alert!) have calloused hands is
certainly at least ancient and probably prehistoric. Here's an example from
Trimalchio's first speech (ch. 39 of the Satyricon of
Petronius). He prates that those born under
the sign of Capricorn (capricornus means `goat horn') are ``wretches who
grow hard facing their troubles'' (the Latin is
...in capricorno aerumnosi, quibus prae mala sua cornua nascuntur...).
No, it's not a literal translation. There's too much going on to translate it
all, and what goes on in English is different.

For one thing aeromnosus, which I translate as `wretch,' is
derived from aerumna which is, loosely, a `burden' -- that is, a `task'
or a `trouble.' Hence the connection with ``sons of toil.'' Also, prae
basically means `before,' but is often understood to mean `in view of' or
almost `as a result of.' I like to preserve the spatial idea of before-ness,
which is why I use `facing,' which tucks a little bit of meaning into the
translation that doesn't belong, in order to include something that does belong
but that otherwise wouldn't be there. For a somewhat similar instance of the
concrete notion of ``facing'' having different abstract, uh, facets, see the
anti- entry.

Finally, you will observe that cornu means `horn' or
`horny tissue.' (The coincidence of meanings makes me think of that roughly
funnel-shaped neutronium thing in one of the
ST:TOS episodes.) That Latin word is, in fact,
the origin of the English word corn, but only in the sense of a local
hardening, horniness, of the skin; other meanings represent other etymologies
that happened to yield the same sound and spelling. Corn in the sense of grain
is a cognate of Latin granus, with a common root in Indo-European (you
know, it's the voicing/devoicing g/c thing). The word grain itself, of
course, comes from Latin. English, as you will recall, is the vocable pack-rat
of languages. Just as a common Indo-European root
gave rise to both corn (via Germanic) and grain (via Latin), so a common IE
root gave rise to horn (via Germanic) and corn (via Latin). [I'm making this a
little more complicated than necessary in order to keep your interest up.
Since you've staggered through my clotted prose so far, you can tell it's
working.] All I need to do now is mention another pair of cognates, and I can
pop a level of tangent discussion off the stack. The English verb
harvest is cognate (again through a common IE root) with the Latin verb
carpere (h/c again, like horn and corn, see?). Both contain the idea of
`pluck, take for advantage.' (You know the verb carpere from the common
expression ``Carpe diem,'' usually translated `seize the day.')

Trimalchio makes a pun on the word Carpe (in ch. 37), explaining that
when he says Carpe, it is both vocative and imperative. (Carpus
is the name of one of his servants.) Considering Molière's bourgeois
gentilhomme, it seems that celebration of grammar, is a time-honored
element in the stereotype of the low-born success.

I really don't know if there is any connection between Petronius and the HHSOT
expression. Time to pop the stack again. ``Sons of toil'' (cf.hidalgo) occurs in English literature
from the eighteenth century on, and seems to have had some kind of vogue among
nineteenth-century poets. An interesting collocation occurs in Egbert Martin's
``Dawning,'' written in the 1870's or thereabouts. The second verse runs thus:

The horny sons of toil arise,
And labour's hammer rings
In honest music to the skies,
Like harps with iron strings.
While hoarse the shout of industry
Rolls like a billow from the sea.

Ballad meter.
Anyway, ``horny sons of toil arise'' today suggests a rather different image
than Martin probably had in mind. Then again, the OED
has an instance of horny in the sense of concupiscent dating back
as early as 1889, and this seems the sort of slang word that might be in
circulation a long time before it happened into the literary record. One is
reminded of the dialogue in Rock Hudson movies, when we see them again, now
that we all know. Of course, some people never didn't get the jokes.
Especially delicious is ``Pillow Talk'' (1959), in which the Rock Hudson
character pretends to be gay in order to seduce the Doris Day
character. At one point Tony Randall, playing the rival, gets to
utter ``Need a light, cowboy?'' Mark Rappaport took an hour of these clips,
spliced in unnecessary commentary mouthed by Rock look-alike Eric Farr, and
released it in 1992 as ``Rock Hudson's Home Movies.''

Incidentally, earlier in that chapter of Satyricon, Trimalchio says
``May the bones of my patron [former master] rest well; he wanted me to be a
man among men.'' (Patrono meo ossa bene quiescant, qui me hominem inter
homines voluit esse.) Time to visit the mano a mano entry. (I mention this only
for the benefit of those few who are not reading serially through all the
entries.)

manoeuvre

Standard British and widespread Commonwealth spelling of what is spelled
maneuver in American English.

A kind of roof with a break in slope on each side, so it is steeper
towards the eaves, and convex in cross section. The break
in slope occurs on all sides--there are no gables (this general situation
is called a hip roof); in the simplest such roof, for a rectangular building,
the edges where the slopes of the roof faces change form a rectangle.
The kind with gables on the end (a `double-sloped' roof) is called gambrel.
You needed to know this. Nathaniel Hawthorn wrote The House of the Seven
Gables. Mansard seems to be more popular in Europe than in the US,
where gambrel roofs are most common on barns. Gambrel and mansard roofs are
both called curb roofs.

gives you something to do while you're driving. The devil finds cell phones for idle hands.

Here's a related proverb, recorded in Vermont Is Where You Find It:
One of the best things about quiltin' is that it gives the womenfolks
somthing to think about while they talk.

Uh-oh... the PC-police lookout gave the signal.
Time for some quick gender-generic repair.

Also recorded in that old book is the following hypothetical exchange:

Pg. 88: What do you do up here in the winter when the road's blocked?
Pg. 90: We just set and think ... mostly set.

Page 89, like almost all the odd pages, is given over to a picture. I've
quoted pretty much all the text on pp. 88 and 90. In 1941 it seems to have
been easier to ``write'' a book. About the text the ``author'' wrote ``Most of
these stories and sayings I heard in Vermont, but that's no sign I wouldn't
have heard them anywhere else in America.'' Or, say,
France. (Even Orsay, France!) See the I
dunno entry for more yokel communication studies.

Oh, if you wanted to learn something about manual transmission, or ``standard
transmission'' as it is still often called, with some justification, you
should have gone to the stick-shift entry.

mantissa

The fractional (``decimal'') part of the logarithm of a number. From the
Latin word (spelled with one ess) meaning
make-weight, which is believed to be of Etruscan
origin (the word, you nitwit, not the make-weight!).

manubrio

Spanish, `handlebar.' If you just stumbled
on this entry by accident, you've missed all the fun. Quick! Before the party
is over, bop on over to the mano de
obra entry.

Man Under

A defensive football coverage in which the UNDERneath defenders are in
MAN-to-man coverage. Further explanation at the Cover-2 entry.

manxane

A highly symmetric cyclic compound, bicyclo [3.3.3] undecane. It can be
thought of as three n-propanes (three chains of three carbons in a row) plus
two ``bridge'' carbons. Each propane has one end bonded to each of the two
bridges. Altogether, then, an eleven-carbon alkane (undecane) comprising
cyclo-octane rings. [One traverses a cycle of eight carbons by completing a
circuit from one bridge carbon, through one propane (three carbons) to the
other bridge carbon, and back to the first bridge carbon along one of the other
three-carbon chains.] Unlike most molecules containing monocyclic
eight-membered rings, this structure is not floppy. Its stable configuration
has either exact or almost-exact C3h symmetry about the 1 and
5 carbons (the bridge carbons, each bonded to one end of each of the three
propane chains). That is, the line through the two bridge carbons is a
three-fold axis, and each propane chain is a rigid copy of its neighbors,
translated a third of a turn about this 1-5 axis and rigidly rotated by the
same angle in the same direction.

The two end carbons of each propane are aligned parallel to the axis, so that
when the molecule is viewed end-on, the four bonds and three atoms of each
propane chain appear as a bent leg viewed from the side -- the end carbons
overlapping in one knee, with the middle carbon at the foot. Viewed in this
way, the molecule as a whole has the form of a triskelion. The crest of the
Isle of Man (traditional adjective form Manx, of course) is a
triskelion. As far as I can tell, the trivial name manxane first
appears in the chemical literature in a 1980 journal article by P. Murray-Rust,
J. Murray-Rust, and C.I.F. Watt: ``The Crystal Structure of Bicyclo [3.3.3]
undecane-1,5-diol and the Conformation of Bicyclo [3.3.3] undecane (Manxane).''
Their article concludes: ``We would like to dedicate this structure to the
memory of the late Professor William Parker who first synthesised and named the
manxane system.''

The 1980 article by the Murray-Rusts and C.I.F. Watt has an illustration of the
Manx crest, though in the nonstandard orientation. All early representations
of the three legs of Man shows them running (i.e., toes and knees
pointing) clockwise, and this is how they still appear on the Manx flag and
other official emblems. A distinctive feature of the Manx triskelion is that
the legs are wearing armor -- at least the legs and feet are plated, and the
heels have six-pointed spurs. (A triskelion of greater antiquity is that of
Sicily. Its legs are naked and it has a Medusa's head at the center. See also
AWB.) The Coat of Arms (technically Arms of HM
in right of the Isle of Man) includes the three legs, which is an interesting
thought. The Manx motto, associated with the island since about 1300, is
``Quocunque Jeceris Stabit,'' or `wherever you throw it, it will stand.'
Like a three-legged stool, I suppose. It was reportedly in use before this
date by the MacLeods of Lewis, ancient Lords of the Isles of Scotland. After
1266, these included the Isle of Man.

Microwave Anisotropy Probe. Scheduled for launch August 2000. Will
eventually sit on a Lagrange point and collect data for over a year.

MAP

Mississippi Association of
Physicists. It's the Mississippi Section of the American Association of
Physics Teachers (AAPT), rather than a state
section of the American Physical Society APS. This
discovery sort of dovetails with the difficulty I've had finding interesting
crossword puzzle fills involving Mississippi. Maybe it's just as well:
``Mississippi'' itself is already eleven letters.

MAP

Modo Asiático de Producción.Spanish, `Asian mode of production.' In some
future expansion of the glossary, we may have an English acronym for this term.
Don't hold your breath. I seem to come across a lot more Marxist literature in
Spanish than in English.

Karl Marx introduced the theory that there is a distinctive ... gee, it looks
like I'm going to want an acronym in English. Let's use AMP,
provisionally. During the 1850's, in a series of articles for the New York
Daily Tribune on British activity and politics in India, Marx introduced
the theory of AMP. Okay, enough of that.

Multipotent Adult Progenitor Cell. Pronounced ``map-sea.'' Something like
adult stem cells with the protean character of embryonic stem cells. Whether
The term was coined for cells extracted from bone marrow and ``meticulously
cultured'' (I haven't seen the original articles). It's not clear whether
these cells existed in the marrow or arose in response to the culture
conditions.

MAPDU

Management Application Protocol Data Unit.

MAPI

Messaging Application Programming Interface.
Not just any one, but Microsoft's standard,
though hardly the sort of name that would yield a strong trademark (videTM). MAPI governs how communications applications
exchange data. To install and work with MAPI-compliant applications, the
Windows user must first have set up Microsoft
Messaging, a standard Windows component.

MAPLA

Midwest (US) Association of Pre-Law
Advisors. Sounds uncomfortably similar to NAPLA. It probably takes longer to say ``MAPLA --
that's em as in Midwest, ay, pee as in Peter, el, ay'' than to just say the
name. They might've called it MWAPLA. For other US regional pre-law
advising organizations, see the list at SWAPLA.

``The MAPLA caravan brings law
school admissions representatives to midwestern colleges and universities each
fall. For undergraduates unable to attend the Law School Forum in Chicago,
this is, for most, the only opportunity for them to meet admissions reps
face-to-face.''

mapo

Russian, `little, few.'

There used to be a series of ads for a children's breakfast drink called
Ovaltine, in which a child pleads ``more Ovaltine, Mom ... please.'' It
does lack some of the poignancy of Dickens's
gruel-starved young Oliver. (``Please, sir, I want some more.'')
But still -- there's a mnemonic for ya.

I should probably explain why this is a mnemonic. This Ovaltine ad ran in the
1960's, and it seemed to me like a palinode for an earlier ad. In the earlier
ad, naughty little Marky refuses to eat his breakfast cereal, so his dad starts
to eat it with ostentatious delight, whereupon the child cries petulantly ``I
want my Maypo!'' This Maypo ad debuted on television in September 1956. It
has its own golden
page at the online Breakfast Cereal Hall of Fame.

Of course, the Russian word transliterated mapo has a short a where
Maypo has a long. But when we've got a great mnemonic like this, we
dare not ask for more, now, do we?

Middle American Radical. The term gained temporary currency from Donald I.
Warren's book The Radical Center: Middle Americans and the Politics of
Alienation (U. Notre Dame Pr., 1976), who used it to describe a segment
of the middle class. According to footnote 3 there, ``[t]he acronym MAR first
appeared in an article in Nationmagazine
of August 17, 1974, entitled ``The Middle American Radical.''

It's not clear that the term MAR meant anything but what was then designated a
(middle-income) conservative. On page 21, the essence of the MAR ideology was
epitomized by the statement ``[t]he rich give in to the poor, and the middle
income people have to pay the bill.'' Sometimes the MAR is described as a
social conservative with liberal or even radical economic positions, but those
positions (pro-Medicare, pro-Social-Security, etc.) were liberal in the 1940's.
In the 1970's, US President Nixon was economically
far to the left of anything we saw in the last fifth of the twentieth century.

To the extent that the so-called radical centrist attitude or resentment
described above persisted through the economic expansion of 1983-1989, it seems
to have been significantly reduced by welfare reform in the 1990's. Then
again, maybe the economic expansion of the 1990's had something to do with it.

The term MAR never caught on, which is why you're reading about it here.

One exception was Samuel Francis, a columnist for the conservative magazine
Chronicles, who used the term essentially for an America-Firster -- a
social conservative like Patrick Buchanan, supporting isolationism, closure of
immigration, autarky (if it can be implemented painlessly), and other actions
intended to preserve a traditional cultural identity, etc. He published a
collection of his columns as Revolution from the Middle. It appears to
be the only or first publication of Middle American Press of Raleigh, NC.

You can find a
favorable review of the Francis book here, courtesy of Ulster Nation, an organization
advocating a ``third way for Ulster.'' This third way, as opposed to
unification with the Republic of Ireland, or remaining a part of the United
Kingdom, is independence. This political position, like every political third way, has at least the initially plausible
appearance of not falling squarely within one of the two major pre-existing
positions. However, as I need hardly remind you, ``Ulster'' and to a lesser
degree ``Northern Ireland'' are shibboleths. The two positions that can
command a committed following are the Republican (now usually called nationalist) and unionist positions. However, the desire of
unionists is not the preservation of control by Crown appointees; it is home
rule dominated by the Protestant majority and making less allowance for
minority (i.e., Catholic) rights or preferences. (The precise sense of
a word like ``less'' in the preceding sentence, and the question of how much
falls in the two categories ``rights'' and ``preferences,'' are matters on
which agreement does not appear likely during the lifetime of the author of
this glossary.) The difference between the unionist position
and the Ulster Nationalist position is really one of means rather than ends,
or else a difference of degree of independence. These comments are off the top
of my head and probably completely fatuous.

In ``The Radical Center or the Moderate Middle?,'' New York Times
Magazine (December 3, 1995), Michael Lind even credited Donald Warren
('member DIW? source of the MAR term?) with coining the term ``radical
center.'' (See
excerpt here.) Michael Lind and his wife are famous for the landmark study
Middletown, USA.

This word is derived from the Latin word
mare, a neuter third-declension noun. In the transition to Romance,
the gender system of Latin went from three to two genders and neuter nouns
generally became male. That did not quite happen in this case. Unusually for
a Spanish noun, this word can take both genders. Generally, mar is
masculine to landlubbers and feminine entre marinos (`among mariners').
In addition, some figurative and sort-of technical expressions construe
mar as female, presumably owing to their originating or being popular
with seamen. For more on gender in Spanish nouns, see the D-ION-Z-A entry.

There's a bit more to say about mare, since it wasn't an entirely
ordinary third-declension. It was an i-stem, meaning that the genitive plural
ended in -ium rather than -um, that an ablative singular form mari
could be used (alternative to the consonantal-stem-like mare), and that
the accusative forms could be different as well. It seems to me that the
unusual morphology might have contributed to confusion that allowed mariners to
select a preferred gender on a more intuitionistic basis. FWIW, another neuter third declension i-stem is
animal, which followed the general rule and became male in Spanish.
The form of the noun that came to be used in Spanish, which does not inflect
nouns according to case, most commonly resembles the Latin ablative (sing.)
form. As animal and mulier (`woman,' Spanish mujer)
illustrate, however, loss of a final unstressed vowel was not unusual.

One of the differences between English and Spanish is the relative abundance of
different roots and substantially different words in English. Words related to
mar illustrate this nicely:

German neuter noun meaning `fairy tale.' Like most
nouns (of course I mean like most
German nouns -- must I repeat myself?) ending in -er, -el, or -en, it is
first-declension. Since there's nothing left to umlaut, the non-dative plural
form is identical with the singular.

marching method

In numerical analysis, ``marching methods'' are the generalization to
higher dimensions of the `shooting methods' used in one-dimensional equations.

Nope. Forget it. It'll do you no good to look up the `shooting methods' entry because I don't
explain that either. Bite the bullet and read a textbook.

MARketing COMmunications. A popular term with marketing types. I'm
not sure what part of marketing it doesn't include.

MARHO

Mid-Atlantic Radical Historians' Organization. The MARHO Newsletter,
first published in 1973, morphed into a scholarly (so I'm told) journal called
the Radical History Review in 1977. (Related stuff at the SftP entry.)

MARIE

MArs RadIation Environment (Experiment). One of three primary measuring
instruments on the Mars Odyssey, a NASA probe that
was launched on April 7, 2001, and went into Mars orbit on October 24, 2001.
The other two instruments are a thermal emission imaging system (THEMIS) and a
gamma ray spectrometer (GRS).

marine animals

Go fish!

marital fellowship

The head term is most commonly used as an uncountable compound noun,
corresponding to the uncountable sense of fellowship. You can look that
up anywhere. Here I just want to note the existence of a countable sense,
arising from a jocular collocation of
marital with fellowship understood in the countable sense similar
to (countable) scholarship. Cf.PM scholarship.

mark

Medieval term for two-thirds of a pound -- i.e., 13 shillings and four pence (13s4d, or 13/4). It was once issued as a
Scottish silver coin called the merk. It ended up
as the basic monetary unit (until 2002) in Finland
(markka in de nominative declension, singular, I dink) and
in Germany. In German, the word is capitalized
like all nouns. (The word Mark is by far the most common feminine
German noun whose plural form is identical with the singular form. If there is
any other instance, it's probably some oddball borrowing from an ancient
language. No, I don't have a particular example in mind.)

An advantage of marks over pounds is that they can be halved an extra time: a
pound is 16 times 1/3 (1s3d). A mark is 32 times 5 pence. You could divide up
evenly 128 ways with farthings, but it begins to look like there are too many
fingers in the pie.

market cap

MARKET CAPitalization. Total value of outstanding shares.

Headgear for supermarket safaris.

Markovnikov's Rule

A rule for determining the dominant product in the addition of a hydrogenhalide to an alkene.
According to the rule, when the double bond is broken, the carbon with the most
hydrogens gets another hydrogen, and the halide bonds to the other carbon.
Sounds like the Matthew Principle.

Markovnikov is now the most common transliteration to English. Other variants
include Markovnikoff, Markownikoff, Markownikov.

The fourth planet. Here's a surprising thing: the orbit of Mars is much
more eccentric than that of the Earth. Aphelion is about 1.67 a.u., and perihelion at 1.38 a.u. This means that
the Earth-to-Mars distance varies by a factor of seven.

There was an unusually favorable opposition of Mars in 1877. That year, a few
days before the closest approach to Earth, Asaph Hall discovered the two moons
of Mars, which he named Deimos and Phobos.

Also in 1877, the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli observed some lines
on the surface of Mars that he described as canali. That word may be
translated to English as `channels,' which may be natural, or `canals,' which
normally are not. In English, his discovery was typically (one may regard it
as a faux ami) translated as `canals.'
(See also the open channel entry.)

BTW, Schiaparelli was born and died in same years as
Samuel Clemens: 1835 and 1910. The latter
wrote in his Autobiography,

I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year
[viz., 1910], and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest
disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty
has said, no doubt: ``Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in
together, they must go out together.''

(For a similar idea, less intentionally amusing, see
BRAINIAC.) William Sheehan's The Planet
Mars: A History of Observation and Discovery was published by the
University of Arizona Press in 1996. The entire book is available
to read free on-line.

MARS

Machine-Assisted Reference Service. A library automation system from the
days before we were cyborgs.

Metropolitan Atlanta (GA) Rapid
Transit Authority. Once upon a time (1978, anyway) MARTA buses were very
clean (which was difficult, because they were painted white). MARTA also
runs trains.

Martinmas

The feast (and day of the MASs) of Saint MARTIN. November 11. WWI ended that day in 1918 (on the eleventh hour of the
eleventh day of the eleventh month). In the US, it became a legal (federal)
holiday in 1938, under the name of Armistice Day. Kristallnacht, a night of
riots, murder of Jews, and arson and looting of synagogues and Jewish-owned
businesses throughout the Third Reich, began the evening of November 9, 1938.
(It was originally planned to last two nights and end on the 11th.)
On November 10, 1938, Enrico Fermi received the call from Stockholm announcing
that he had won the Nobel Prize in Physics for that year. The timing was
convenient, since with the imposition of anti-Semitic laws in
Italy that autumn, the Fermis had decided to
emigrate to the US (Enrico's wife Laura was Jewish). The Fermis sailed on from
Sweden to the US (officially for a six-month stay),
avoiding certain currency restrictions imposed by Italy. Good fascists
everywhere were incensed that he shook the hand of the Swedish king, instead of
extending his arm in the fascist salute. Newspapers published stupid political
cartoons about how he must have injured his arm or something.

The Fermis boarded the ``Franconia'' bound for their new home on December 24,
1938. Laura wrote about this in Atoms in the Family. Exploring
the ship with their children Nella and Giulio, they ``... called an elevator.
As its doors swung open, we were face to face with a short old man in a baggy
red suit and furry white trimmings, with a long white beard and twinkling blue
eyes. The three of us stood still, fascinated, open-mouthed. The queer old
man motioned us inside the elevator and then, with a benevolent smile, said to
us: `Don't you know me? I am Santa Claus.' ''

Later, when she explained about Santa Claus to her children (``He does
not ride a broomstick but a sleigh ...'' etc.) they wanted to know

``Will the Epiphany come to us all the same? She knows we are Italian
children. ...''

``No, she will not. She could not get a visa and must remain in Italy,''
I answered on the inspiration of the moment.

When their ship arrived in New York, Enrico ceremoniously declared the
establishment of the ``American branch'' of the Fermi family.

In the year of 1942, announcing the success of Fermi's
reactor (in guarded language over a telephone) Arthur Holly Compton told
James Bryant Conant, ``Jim, you'll be interested to know that the Italian
navigator has just landed in the new world.''

Since AHC had previously indicated that completion of the pile was further
away, he added, ``the earth was not as large as he had estimated, and he
arrived at the new world sooner than he had expected.''

Columbus, on the other hand, underestimated the size of the earth,
and it was partly for this reason that he supposed he could reach the
Indies quickly by the Atlantic route. (He also figured he could take
advantage of favorable winds off the West coast of Africa, but he couldn't
admit this because an international convention between Portugal and Spain
officially forbade him to sail that far South.) In 1492, Spain expelled all
Jews living within its borders. (Actually, they also had the option of
converting and coming under suspicion of judaizing and being tortured,
confessed and executed by the Inquisition.) Columbus sailed from Spain on the
last day for Jews to get out.

Columbus Day is celebrated (or observed, by those who object) on the second
Monday in October. Traditionally, Columbus Day was celebrated on October 12,
the day land was first sighted (the first recorded Columbus Day celebration in
the US took place on the 300th anniversary of the day).

Chico (1891-1961)
(Leonard) Shtick was piano. Chico pronounced ``chick-oh,''
in reference to his hobby, or ``pursuit.''
Harpo (1893-1964)
(Adolph) Mute. Most unbegrudged guest at the Algonquin Round Table.
Some links: 123
Gummo (1894-1978)
(Milton) Left the vaudeville act in 1915 because he stuttered (so
why couldn't he have had the mute role?).
Groucho (1895-1977)
(Julius Henry) Mr. Nice Guy.
Zeppo (1901)
(Herbert) A juvenile delinquent. After the Four Marx Brothers act
became the three, he eventually found more suitable work
as an agent.

Movimiento al Socialismo. A
Bolivian political party headed by Evo Morales,
leader of the country's coca producers. (It's legal to grow coca in Bolivia.
On the basis of my family's experience surviving in Bolivia, however, I would
caution that legality there is a kind of interesting technicality.) Evo
Morales was elected president in December 2005.

mas

Spanish conjunction equivalent to `but.'
Equivalent to Frenchmais and Italian
ma, but not much used. The much more common word is pero. I
found that using ma in this sense was one of the tougher things to get
used to in Italian (for me as a Spanish-speaker); fortunately, Italian has the
equivalent però if you want to use it.

Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
Preceded the laser, but not as telegenic since microwaves are invisible.

MASH

Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. Robert Hooker wrote a novel by that title,
and Ring Lardner, Jr., wrote a screenplay out of it. The movie (1970) was directed
by Robert Altman and starred Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, and other people
you've heard of.

M*A*S*H

A way of writing MASH that suggests that no
more graceful form of font-based emphasis is available. This form appears on
at least a couple of different box covers for videos of the movie.
IMDb gives ``M*A*S*H Gives A D*A*M*N'' as the
movie's tagline, but otherwise seems to support the view that the asterisked
form is the name of the TV
sequel. That seems to be a widely held view. Of course, some other widely
held views are that the TV show was amusing and not by turns treacly and
insipid, so you can take that for what it's worth.

Without citing a source, this webpage claims
that the asterisks were a publicity man's idea and were not in the original
title. That seems likely, but it raises the question whether the asterisks
were part of the initial promotion of the movie, or were adopted later. An
original Polish movie poster describes the movie as a ``satyryczny obraz armii
amerykanskiej w Korei'' (modulo some accents), and gives the title as M.A.S.H.
Most other promotional posters for this movie that one can find on the web
(here, for
example) use asterisks. Probably most are unclearly or uncertainly dated,
but all those that rely on stills or artwork from the studio (unlike the
original cartoon in the Polish ad) seem to include asterisks. In some of the
pictures that appear to be older, however, the asterisks are smaller than they
usually are now, and are not centered vertically but appear lower. These could
have been interpreted as slightly raised periods, though there were only three.
Perhaps they were originally intended to emphasize (though one might have
guessed it from the capitalization) that the title was not the nonacronymic
word mash. It's worth noting that in Latin monumental inscriptions (of
all periods, classical to modern), raised periods or dots have been used to
separate letters of an abbreviation (so a four-letter abbreviation like SPQR would have only three marks in the locations
where MASH has asterisks).

That's what I've found and thought of. Draw your own conclusions.

Mashie

Obsolete name for a five iron (golf club). One number higher is a
Spade Mashie.

Mashie-Niblick

Obsolete name for a seven iron (golf club). Between a Mashie and a Niblick.
Just as of this writing, this entry is leading in the contest for entry
of least personal utility to the glossarist.

``Over my dead body!''

``That would be a mashie-niblick shot,'' said Sidney McMurdo.

[P. G. Wodehouse: Nothing Serious, (1950).]

masl

Meters Above Sea Level.

MASPS

Minimum Aviation System Performance Standards. Specifies standards for
GPS. Standard based on earlier Air Force specs.

mass affluent

A term used for marketing demographic. Specifically families, and members
of families, with annual incomes of over $75,000 per annum (2003-adjusted
dollars). According to the US Census Bureau, 15% of US households were in the
ranks of the mass affluent in 1980, 26% in 2005. I didn't actually check with
the Census Bureau; I'm just parroting an
an article by Raksha
Arora and Lydia Saad in the Gallup Management Journal. They explain
that women in this demographic are ``smart, educated, and have considerable
discretionary income,'' and they offer tips on how to sell to them. Something
that I object even more strongly to than an ugly term like ``mass affluent
women'' is the facile assumption that rich people -- even moderately rich
people, IOW people fabulously rich by historical
standards -- are smart. In principle, to the degree that smarts tend to help
you get rich or marry rich or choose rich parents, there will be a correlation.
So they might be smarter, if not smart. But in practice, not much.

massage

One day, completely out of the blue, this woman asked me, ``why are you
massaging my ass?'' Actually, I was just squeezing her sexy butt. Looking
back, or thinking back, or whatever back, that might be the most
thought-provoking question she ever asked me. Not because the answer was any
mystery, but because the question was. (Yes, ``this woman'' was my girlfriend.
Demonstrative adjectives are versatile.)

Massenkarambolage

In my high school German class in 1972 or so, we encountered this beautiful
word in a popular magazine (probably Bunte
Illustrierte). It wasn't in any of our dictionaries. An Austrian boys'
choir touring the US visited our class around then, and they didn't recognize
this word either. They even denied that it was a word. Now there's the
Internet. To all the people who have doubted me ever since, I can now say:
google it!

Master of Arts in Teaching. It provides
certification for some segment of K-12 along with graduate study in the
academic area in which it is awarded.

MAT

Miller Analogy Test. Usually called the ``Miller Analogies Test.''

MAT

Moving Annual Trend.

materialistic

Me!!?? ``Materialistic''?? Oh you are soooo wrong! I have a dream, and
my vision is steadily focused on that dream! I dream of financial independence
and security. The more securities, the better! It is a very unique dream,
because it is my personal dream of my personal financial success, rather
someone else's dream of someone else's success.

mathematics

In a speech in 1913, Cassius J. Keyser (J. does not stand for Julius)
explained:

``But does not the lawyer sometimes arrive at correct conclusions? Undoubtedly
he does sometimes, and, what may seem yet more astonishing, so does your
historian and even your sociologist, and that
without the help of accident. When this happens, however, when these students
arrive, I do not say at truth, for that may be by lucky accident or happy
chance or a kind of intuition, but when they arrive at conclusions that are
correct, then that is because they have been for the moment in all literalness
acting the part of mathematician. I do not say this for the aggrandizement of
mathematics.''

The research techniques and measurement scales of any science can be viewed
as a problem in the sociology of knowledge.

Matlab

A region of Bangladesh. Actually, Matlab is an upazila of Chandpur
District in the Division of Chittagong. An upazila, as you may infer, is some
kind of subdistrict, something like either a US county or, in states like New
York and Indiana, a township. Matlab Upazila has an area of 409 sq. km.

I'm sure it's a delightful enough place, but I've never been. I only learned
about it while browsing (this can be done by hand, my young friends) the June
2012 issue of Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics. The first article
there was ``Sibship Size, Birth Order, and Children's Education in Developing
Countries: Evidence from Bangladesh,'' by Cheolsung Park and Wankyo Chung.
Here is the beginning of the abstract:

We examine whether the effect of sibship size on education differs by the
individual's birth order in low-income countries, using details from Matlab,
Bangladesh. Exploiting exposure to the randomized family planning program in
Matlab for identification...

I have to say that I was momentarily disoriented. Because of
MATLAB. Ironically, I was only browsing this
journal as part of my randomized study of capitalization in journal titles on
covers. Anyway, you might as well get something useful out of this entry, so
here's the rest of the abstract:

...we find that sibship has negative effect on education [well, duh] and
positive effect on labor force participation of the first and second-born
children [duhble duh], but no significant effect on education or labor force
participation of the later-born children [eh, makes sense, but it's beginning
to be interesting, so I'll have to stop].

MATLAB

MATrix LABoratory. It's a numerical computing environment and
fourth-generation programming language. It's widely used, but I'm not sure I'd
call it popular. It's vile but useful. How is it useful? Years ago, when I
used to hang out in the old saunas, err, computer clusters with their Unix
boxes (SPARC stations, to give you a vague idea of the era) and hulking
CRT's, I would notice that some students would log
in to two adjacent machines and use them together. It turned out that they
were slaving over homework assigned by professors of mechanical or industrial
engineering who could think of nothing more educational or enlightening to
assign than tedious MATLAB projects. The results were too large to view on a
single screen. To paraphrase Ernest Rutherford, if they have to use MATLAB,
you should have designed a better homework problem.

Mate is a moderately interesting verb, somewhat less interesting
than the activity. And animals and electric cords can be mated, though
generally not to each other. Also, when animals are mated, they usually mate
-- even though they are ``the passive recipients of the action of'' mating,
according to some old grammars' explanations of the passive voice, they are not
so passive: they do the business of mating themselves. That's how it is with
that sort of intransitive verb. The ``mating season'' of an animal is the time
when the animal (speaking pairwise collectively 'ere, mate) mates. Except
pandas. The panda mating season is a sort of window of
missed opportunity: sometime during the mating season there comes a day, maybe
two, when the female panda is in the mood. She could probably sleep through
it, and when she's awake she hardly knows what to do about it. The males
aren't exactly operators either. So mating season is what zookeepers call a
``challenge.'' They monitor the female's estrogen level -- she comes into heat
just after it peaks. It's a miracle pandas survived before zoos were invented.

Mirror Australian Telegraph Publications. Often listed as the source of
stories in Australian newspapers.

Matthean priority

A term of art in biblical text criticism that originally meant, and should
still be used to mean, the theory that the Gospel of Matthew preceded not
only that of Luke but also that of Mark. Not a very popular idea among
scholars.

Groucho (I mean Groucho Marx, not any of the other famous people called
Groucho) said:

The principle that credit for a scientific discovery or other achievement
goes to those already famous. [Name refers to the gospel of Matthew 13:12. In the King James version: ``For whosoever hath, to him shall
be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him
shall be taken away even that he hath.''] One example is the tendency to
attribute every method and formulation of mechanics to Newton instead of
distributing to Euler, the Bernoullis, Gauss, LaGrange, D'Alembert, Poisson,
Hamilton, Jacobi and others the credit for their contributions. Similarly,
Aristotle is often credited for the atomic hypothesis (developed by Democritus).

The Matthew Principle is in itself an example of the Matthew principle: in its
elaborated form, it was introduced by Robert Merton. Another example is the
old saying about ``standing on the shoulders of giants.'' The phrase is
normally quoted in the form used by Newton, but is far older. Merton himself
examines this in an exhaustively discursive ``Shandean Postscript.''

Matthewsesque

Like Matthews. Most often like Dave Matthews, the musician, and less
often, but still frequently, like Chris Matthews, an MSNBC talk-show host.
Matthews is not an unusual name. Cf.Olbermannesque.

Multistation Access Unit. Also MSAU. Not
necessarily the same as MAU above.

MAUD

The properly mysterious name of the British atomic weapons project in
WWII -- initially mysterious even to those who
created it. When you give up, you can find the explanation at the related
MED entry.

Once while staying at Christ College, Oxford, I asked directions for ``Maudlin
College,'' which was the only name by which I'd ever heard it called.
When it was pointed out to me on the map, I couldn't see it. I said, ``there's
just a Magdalene College there.'' It was very sweetly explained to me then
that the pronunciation ``Maudlin'' for the college name is a popular
affectation among the students. I am also informed that the ``Maudlin''
pronunciation is also used at Cambridge. There will always be at least a few
who go by the spelling, so I am not surpised that many people outside the
university (whichever university) think that the name is pronounced normally
there (i.e., according to the normal pronunciation of ``Magdalene'').

MAV

Mars Ascension Vehicle. A special vehicle for celebrating the Feast of the
Ascension in the Marian (Scots librarian) rite. Oh wait -- it's Mars
with an ess! So it's a Marsian rite? Marcion?
Okay, the guess method isn't working so well this time. I think the
explanation at the ERV entry may be more accurate.

Maxwell-Boltzmann. Refers to a Gaussian momentum or velocity distribution
assumed by a noninteracting classical gas in equilibrium. The distribution
is the classical limit of both the Bose-Einstein (for bosons) and Fermi-Dirac distributions (for fermions). Unlike those quantum distributions, the MB
distribution depends on the density or chemical potential only through an
overall scale. The MB distribution is isotropic, and perpendicular components
of momentum described by it are completely uncorrelated. The class of MB
distributions (i.e., the set of MB distributions for all temperatures
and chemical potentials) is the set of all distributions having these two
properties. In other words, the MB distribution can be derived from isotropy
and separability, with a scale fixed by any single nonzero-dimensional, nonzero
(in practice: even) moment of the distribution.

Near-equilibrium ensembles of particles with a current may be described by a
``drifted Maxwellian'' -- the usual MB Gaussian distribution translated to have
a nonzero average momentum.

The electrons in a nondegenerate semiconductor band, although charged,
can be approximated as noninteracting, and satisfy the MB distribution.
One thus refers to a ``nondegenerate electron (or hole) gas'' or
semiconductor plasma.

MB

Medicaid Bureau.

MB

MegaByte. 220 bytes.

mb

MilliBarn. A unit of cross section equal to 0.001
barn. Popular in nuclear scattering.

mB

MilliBel. The common abbreviation, rarely used, for a rare unit, commonly
used. That is, volume is often defined internally in millibels, but the
integer that stores it is typically thought of in ``hundredths of decibels''
(dB, which see).

MB

MotherBoard. Also politically correct equivalent MainBoard.

MB

Mushroom Body. A structure found in insect brains that seems to be
associated with the chemosensory system.

The International Monitoring System (IMS) code
for the seismic station at Mould Bay, Canada.

The slight linguistic divergences between the US and the British commonwealth
have the effect, in a surprisingly large number of instances, of allowing
homonyms to be distinguished in one orthographic tradition and not the other.
For example, US usage distinguishes carat and
karat, and preservation of the old form gotten as past participle
of get allows this to be distinguished from the modal got. On
the other side of the ledger, British usage continues to distinguish queane
and queen (perhaps a bit more useful distinction in a monarchy) and also
distinguishes mold and mould.

When I asked after one in a coin store in Cambridge in 1993, I was told the
going rate was fifty quid. The perfect gift for the molecular beam jockey
who has everything (or at least no more unused chamber access points).

Queen Elizabeth II awarded the MBE to all four Beatles on June 12, 1965.

MBE

Molecular Beam Epitaxy. PVD used for compound
semiconductor growth. A number of individual MBE labs have homepages,
including

Editorial Bellisco publishes a Manual del Hormigón Armado
(`Manual of Reinforced Concrete'; Manual de Hormigón
Armado would be a reinforced concrete manual, and a good deal heavier).
It was written by R. Ferreras, but for short, you could think of it as the
Manual Bellisco de Hormigón (`Bellisco Manual of Concrete') and
then you could recognize it from the MBH colophon. This is useful because
the words along the binding are backwards...
When an English-language book is lying closed on a horizontal surface, with
the front cover on top, the lengthwise writing along the binding is right-side
up. This is true in countries with right-hand-side driving and those with
left-hand-side driving. (I would mention country where both left- and
right-hand-side driving are common, but English is not an important language
in West Texas.) A quick check proves that all books
published in German, Spanish, Italian, and French follow the opposite
convention. The great
advantage of this is that if you have a multivolume work stacked on a table
in order, with the first volume on top and all the front covers naturally
facing down, then you can read the common title right-side-up (of course, the
volume numbers are now facing sideways).
An important exception to this rule
is that books to teach English-speakers German, Spanish, etc., typically adopt
the English orientation -- possibly because the books are manufactured by
English-language publishers. If you've ever browsed a book-shelf that mixed
the two orientations in comparable numbers, you'll probably agree that the
greatest value of an orientation standard is
not in its orientation but in the fact of its being a standard. Let me tell
you, the EU was way ahead of you on this. In fact,
they know exactly how much
standardization is just right. In simple terms, it is this: globalization is
bad; all Europe should be like France. First Brussels has to get the
condom-dimension problem hammered down, so those things are not so monstrously
large that they slip off Mr. Pencil, they will tackle book bindings. It's
natural: they have to have you by the short hairs to get you to surrender
sovereignty over your library.

But again to the manual/Manuel thing:
Anglophones so frequently misspell the Spanish proper noun Manuel as
Manual that at Amazon.com, some books are listed under both names:
e.g., A Saint Is Born in Chima [or possibly in China], by the
twins Manual Zapata
Olivella and Manuel Zapata Olivella, tr. Thomas E. Kooreman; Self and
Interpersonal Insight : How People Gain Understanding of Themselves and Others
in Organizations, apparently by the father-and-son team of Manuel London
and Manual London; Sounding Forth the Trumpet by Peter Marshall, David
Manual [not credited on the cover], and David Manuel [no relation, I guess].
The anthology Menopause and the Heart includes Manual Neves-E-Castro
among its editors, and has one Manuel Neves-e-Castro among its contributors.

This whole entry is going to be rewritten, but for now I'd just like to add
that another way to describe how spine text on English-language books is
normally printed is top-to-bottom. In Hebrew, writing is from right-to-left
and as one reads, one turns pages on the left over to the right. (That is,
books begin at what would be the back of an English book. This can cause
confusion. Some years ago, I found a book of Talmud at the main library of
UNM that had all the library markings upside down, so if you had no trouble
reading Hebrew characters upside-down and from the bottom of the page up, you
could open the book from the left and read it all left-to-right. Of course, a
page of Talmud is segmented around a central text, so things are a little more
complicated than that, but it was a nice thought.) Anyway, the point I wanted
to make was that Hebrew books, at least the ones I've looked at, also have
sideways text on the spine printed from top to bottom, which means that when
you lay a Hebrew book down with the front cover up, you can easily read the
spine text (unless you're more comfortable reading it upside down). The
situation is more complicated with Japanese.

MBI

Max Born Institute.

mbira

An African musical instrument. I don't know whether it's a string, wind,
or percussion instrument, but no matter what your musical training, I'm sure
you can play it in Scrabble® -- you can even play multiple
mbiras. (You can play it according to
any of the three major Scrabble
dictionaries.)

Monument Builders of North
America. An association of memorial and memorialization companies dealing
with creating memorials, tombstones, and markers. I still wonder how they
dealt with their Y2K problem. (You know -- the
stones pre-engraved ``died 19 .'')

MBO

Management Buy-Out. Meaning that the management team buys (a controlling
stake in) the company, not that the company buys out the remainder of
the management's contract.

Mortgage-Backed Security. Sometimes rather backless, more like a
mortgage-backed insecurity.

MBS

Multiple-Blade Slurry (saw).

MBT

Main Battle Tank.

MBT

Molecular Beam Technique[s].

MBTA

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. Public transit operator
in the greater Boston (MA) area. Once called MTA.

MBTI

Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator. Sort of like a
geek code for nonprogrammers, except that it's not especially informative.
Created by Katherine Meyers and Isabel Briggs following the inspiration of
Jung (God help us, the Swiss did not). Every person is categorized
willy-nilly according to four binary
distinctions: Extroverted/Introverted, iNtuitive/Sensing, Feeling/Thinking,
and the Judgmental/Perceptive, each of the sixteen groups being labelled
according to the four relevant letters -- ENFJ,
ISTP, etc. Occasionally appears in personals ads. It's such a speciously
plausible and ultimately misguided idea, it's surprising it's not more popular.

Management by Wandering Around. Lording it over your subordinates.
Euphemism devised by Tom Peters, an idol of management theorists and other
philosophasters.

MB20

MatchBox TWENTY. Their first
album came out in 1996. In 2007 they released an album entitled ``Exile on
Mainstream.'' In case you're having trouble placing it, that's an allusion to
the Rolling Stones' ``Exile on Main St.,'' a platinum double album released in
1972.

MC

Marginal Cost[s]. The derivative of price with respect to quantity, or
an equivalent measure (the difference quotient of the same functions, or
simply the cost of a single additional unit of a discretely countable good or
service).

An MC is sometimes an accomplished entertainer in his or her own right, and
as such may have achieved mastery of some artistic skill. Unlike a Master
of Arts, however, one may become an MC without first being a Bachelor of
Ceremonies. I think.

MC

Master of Counseling. The National Board for Certified Counselors
Examination (NBCCE) handles national and state individual certification
in the US. Curricula are usually more specialized:
MC/CC -- Community Counseling,MC/MFCC -- Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling,MC/MFT -- Marriage and Family Therapy,MC/MHC -- Mental Health Counseling.

M.C., MC

Medium-Capacity (bomb). WWIIRAF designation for a bomb that was 40-50% explosive
by weight. Hence, the term is also sometimes expanded ``Medium-Casing.'' MC
bombs were made in 500-lb, to 2000-lb. sizes. Continue reading now at the
CWR entry or you'll be sorry.

MC

Medium Coeli. Latin, `center of the
sky.' The point of the Zodiac which is closest to the zenith.

MC

Member of Congress. That is, a congressman, congresswoman, or
congressperson (in the cases of male, female, or other congresspeople, resp.).
MC is a rather unusual abbreviation, for obvious reasons too tedious to
enumerate.

MotorCycle. In Indiana, riding an MC with improper headgear is a 4-point
violation -- as bad as driving 16 to 25 mph over the speed limit. Since most
MC drivers don't wear any headgear at all, I guess ``improper headgear'' refers
to driving under the influence of Carmen Miranda
(CM).

Multiple Choice. A type of test question in which the test-taker must
choose answers from among a finite and usually small set. Some or all of the
answers offered are wrong. Also known as ``multiple guess.''

MCA

Don't know yet what the M C A stand for in MCA Records, but that's
no reason why I should withold a link,
I suppose.

Monetary Compensatory Amount. A part of the EU's
common agriculture policy (CAP) back when it was
the EEC. MCA's were subsidies designed to shelter
farmers from exchange-rate movements. They were especially intended to protect
German farmers from being undercut by farmers in EEC countries with weaker
currencies than the DM (i.e., all other EEC
countries). MCA's were phased out after some haggling in 1984-5. (Nowadays,
of course, all Euroland has a common currency,
so there are no exchange-rate issues and everyone is happy;-)

Men's Classical Caucus. A nonexistent organization. (Cf.WCC.) Not to be confused with the Mens
Classical Caucus -- the organization dedicated to promoting thoughtfulness
within the APA. This organization is also
nonexistent.

Mott Community College. In nearby Flint,
Michigan. The first question on the homepage is ``Why MCC?'' Why indeed.
One answer: ``MCC is
the only college in the world (have they checked in Pakistan?) with the mission
to serve the residents of the 21 schools districts in Genesee County
[Michigan].'' Hey -- if you graduated from high school in Genesee -- you're in
like Flint!

``In 1950 Charles
Stewart Mott gave $1 million to develop Flint Junior College into a
four-year institution in collaboration with the University of Michigan...''

Today, MCC is still a two-year college, but for a bunch of years it provided
facilities for the University of Michigan -- Flint.

The primary political divisions of most states are termed counties. Minor
civil divisions (MCDs) are the primary governmental or administrative divisions
of a county in many states (parish in Louisiana). MCDs represent many
different kinds of legal entities with a variety of governmental and/or
administrative functions. MCDs are variously designated as American Indian
reservations, assessment districts, boroughs, charter townships, election
districts, election precincts, gores, grants, locations, magisterial districts,
parish governing authority districts, plantations, precincts, purchases, road
districts, supervisors' districts, towns, and townships. [Especially
townships, in like 33 states.] In some states, all or some incorporated places
are not located in any [state-defined] MCD (independent places) and thus serve
as MCDs in their own right [for census purposes]. In other states,
incorporated places are part of the MCDs in which they are located (dependent
places), or the pattern is mixed--some incorporated places are independent of
MCDs and others are included within one or more MCDs. In Maine and New York,
there are American Indian reservations and off-reservation trust lands that
serve as MCD equivalents; a separate MCD is created in each case where the
American Indian area crosses a county boundary. [Exhale.]

If you want to see where the MCD's are on a map, you want to travel to the
Lima entry for bibliographic details of Township
Atlas of the United States.

Molten-Carbonate Fuel Cell. A fuel cell (FC)
in which the electrolyte is molten carbonate. Experimental MCFC's operate
around 650°C and the charge carriers are carbonate ions --
(CO3)2-. Like FC's with solid-oxide electrolyte (SOFC), MCFC's can be used to combust carbon monoxide.

Maternal and Child Health Board. Part of the Health Resources and Services
Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services (DHHS). Currently
charged with administering Title V of the Social Security Act (enacted 1935),
which authorized the creation of the Maternal and Child Health Services
programs.

``The faculty believes that each person is endowed with an intellect;'' -- whoa,
stop the press! -- ``hence [logic in action!], the
educational process of MCHS students is to develop that individual to the
greatest possible degree in the mental, physical, ethical, and social aspects
of his or her personality.''

Look, I realize that it's extremely unfair to take what's posted prominently on
the MCHS web page and reproduce it here accurately for your amusement. So I
want you to know that I'm not holding Kentucky up for special scorn. In the
Boston area there's a school principal who has suspended a dozen of his
teachers without pay because they've failed the state English competency tests,
but he himself has failed them in a number of tries (as of early August 2003).
He makes excuses and says it's ``frustrating,'' but I haven't seen the word
``embarrassing'' there yet.

``MCHS has as its philosophy the desire to meet adequately the needs of each
individual student.''

MCI

Media Control Interface. What the White
House Spokesperson tries to be.

MC/I

MicroPhone Included.

MCI

Microwave Communications Incorporated. Merged with WorldCom 1997-1998
to become MCI Worldcom, a
provider of long-distance telephone service, and later internet service.
While WorldCom has been in bankruptcy, they've taken the name MCI as less
tainted.

The original name MCI reflects the history of the break-up of Ma Bell: when
AT&T was a regulated monopoly, it charged
businesses relatively high rates for long-distance service. Microwave links
made this service cheap, and discounters competed for the business long-lines
service. After years in anti-trust litigation, ATT agreed to be broken up
(into seven original baby Bells that provided local service, ATT long lines,
Bell Labs -- which last became Lucent -- and I forget what else; some other
Bell Labs -- i.e., not in Murray Hill, NJ -- became corporate labs for Western
Electric and whatnot). Part of the stated motive for agreeing to the break-up
was the perception that increasing competition in long-distance services was
draining the profit from ATT's most lucrative business while regulation as a
monopoly prevented it from competing in emerging businesses.

MCI

Mild Cognitive Impairment. Like having a slight buzz on, but with dimmer
prospects for recovery.

MetaCarpoPhalangeal. I.e., of the metacarpus (or metacarpi) and
phalanx (or phalanges). Or maybe instead of `of the phalanx (or phalanges)'
that should read phalagis (vel phalangum). Those Romans must have been
real anatomy wizards.

Manufacturers
Council of Small School Buses. An NTEA group
formed in 1990 ``to address various small school bus issues and work with
federal agencies and other industry groups in revising existing standards and
developing new standards that affect the industry.''

MCT

Mercury Cadmium Telluride. [Usually called ``Mercadtel'' in colloquial speech.] A common II-VI alloy semiconductor. Mercury telluride (HgTe and cadmium telluride (CdTe) have similar lattice constants (6.373 Å
and 6.482 Å, respectively), and form a stable ternary (pseudobinary) at
all intermediate concentrations, with zero bandgap at about
Hg0.2Cd0.8Te.

One way to categorize business environments is by considering whether their
market and technological environments are stable or volatile. Not that these
questions always have definite answers, but it might be a useful idealization
for puposes of discussion or of writing a speciously convincing business plan.

If both market and technology are stable, then the environment is dull,
and the organization that deals with it is ``hierarchical'' or ``bureacratic.''
That doesn't sound very good, but it's a flattering way to describe the
challenges faced by the Dusty Ridge, Oklahoma news-stand.

If both market and technology are volatile, you can say the environment is
dangerous, and the organization must be ``flexible'' or ``dynamic'' or at
least have its résumé up to date.

If either the market or the technology environment is volatile, and the other
is stable, then the organization that is supposed to best suited to deal with
it is ``mixed.'' Whatever is volatile dominates changes and drives
decision-making. Hence `MD mixed'' and ``TD
mixed'' organizations.

Magen David Adom. Red Star-of-David. The Israeli organization that
corresponds to the Red Cross or the Red Crescent in other countries, but which
is essentially blackballed from ordinary membership in the International Red
Cross.

Muscular Dystrophy Association. It's ``a
voluntary health agency -- a dedicated partnership between scientists and
concerned citizens aimed at conquering neuromuscular diseases that affect more
than a million Americans.'' I didn't realize that the word agency still
had enough cachet for an NGO to want to use it in
self-description.

``MDA was created in 1950 by a
group of adults with muscular dystrophy, parents of children with muscular
dystrophy, and a physician-scientist studying the disorder. Since its earliest
days it has been energized by its number-one volunteer and national chairman,
entertainer Jerry Lewis.

The Association's programs are funded almost entirely by individual private
contributors. MDA seeks no government grants, United Way funding or fees from
those it serves.''

MDA is best known for its annual Labor Day telethon, still hosted in 2005 by
Jerry Lewis, age 79. In the telethon context, children suffering from MD are
``Jerry's kids.''

``First broadcast over Labor Day
weekend in 1966 by a lone TV station in New York City, the unique event
starring popular comedian Jerry Lewis quickly caught the public's attention
-- and raised more than $1 million in pledges.''

Medium-Density Fiberboard. A building construction material. Wood
fiber embedded in a binder (typically a synthetic ``resin'' or plastic)
under heat and pressure. Density 30-55 lb./cu.ft. (Water has a density
of 62 lb./cu.ft.) MDF is available in thicknesses up 2 in. Cf.
Particleboard (PB) is made the same way generally,
but with wood particles, or a mix of particles and fibers, instead of only
wood fibers. Hardboard is denser, and uses only fibers and the naturally
occurring lignin as binder. See S1S (hardboard
smooth on one side) entry. The LMA's downloadable glossary
had more information; it may have migrated to the
CPA website after the merger in 2004, but I
haven't had time to check.

MDGA

Medical Doctor Global Assessment. When written out or spoken, this is more
likely to be called a `physician global assessment.' However, a related metric
is the patient global assessment (PGA);
evidently the MD abbreviation is used to maintain a distinction in the
initialisms.

Mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondria are one of a
small class of cell organelles that function like symbiotes in the cells that
contain them, reproducing asexually in a process distinct from the host's
reproduction, and carrying their own DNA. Mitochondria generally come from
the egg in sexual reproduction, so they are passed strictly along the maternal
line. (How that happens is still unclear. For a long time it was claimed
that the sperm mitochondria are jettisoned at fertilization, but the direct
evidence for that is apparently not so clear.)

The simple genetics of maternal-line heredity makes mDNA an attractive
subject for archaeogenetic studies. Another attraction is that the typical
human cell has about a thousand mitochondria, so there's more DNA material to
work with.

MDP

Millennium Democratic Party. One of South
Korea's major political parties. In December 2002, human-rights lawyer Roh
Moo-hyun won election as president on the MDP ticket. In 2003, MDP split,
leaving the part with 62 seats in the 273-member National Assembly, while 46
suporters of Mr. Roh bolted to form the new ``Uri'' party. Roh left the MDP in
September 2003, but had not formally joined Uri as of March 2004.

MultiDrug-Resistant TB. When it appeared in the
1990's it was defined as TB with resistance to the first-line TB drugs
isoniazid and
rifampin. Cf.XDR-TB.

MDS

MyeloDysplastic Syndrome.

mdse.

MerchanDiSE.

MDT

(South African) Media Defence Trust. Founded in 1988 and
now defunct. An NGO that served during the
apartheid era as a legal defense fund for South African journalists and as a
lobbying/research organization during the transition to majority rule. Some of
the work of this organization is continued by the MDF (... Fund) of FXI.

Mississippi Education Association. Founded in 1885, and for most of its
existence the strongest teacher's union in the state, it merged with the
Mississippi Teachers Association in 1975. It was a rough transition. Its
founding occurred during the period of official anti-black oppression that
followed Reconstruction, so it was the segregated ``white'' union during most
of its existence. The MTA was the ``colored'' union. The MEA was the NEA affiliate; the MTA was an affiliate of the
parallel black organization (ATA).

In 1965 and 1966, in the second decade of the civil rights struggles, the NEA
passed resolutions requiring that its member state associations remove
discriminatory language from their constitutions and eliminate racial
guidelines for membership, thereby forcing states with dual associations to
move toward merger. At a meeting in Miami, Florida in 1966, the national
organizations -- the NEA and the ATA -- merged. You can read a summary of the events at
this page describing a critical document collection. Basically, the MEA
and MTA leaderships met and managed
(initially with some help from an NEA ``fact finder'') to hammer out merger
agreements. However, while MTA members approved, MEA members repeatedly
refused (through their delegate assemblies, apparently; I'm not clear on
whether there was ever a vote by the full membership).

In 1969 the NEA suspended the MEA's affiliation, and in 1970 the NEA named
the MTA as its sole affiliate organization. Contacts between the MEA and MTA
continued, however, and a merger was approved by delegate assemblies in March
1975. The merged organization was called the Mississippi Association of
Educators.

MEA

Montana Education Association. The NEA
affiliate until the year 2000, when it merged with the
MFT to become the
MEA-MFT.

MEADS

Medium Extended Air Defense System.

MEALAC

Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. Not really the most
attractive acronym, but it can be pronounced. For more substantial comment,
see the COI entry.

Six Sigma snake oil to grease the skids of
a ``downsizing.'' More accurate name for Lean
Sigma.

MEAP

Michiana Employee Assistance
Program. An organization that contracts with Michiana-area employers to provide professional
and confidential services, including ``assessment, referral, short-term
counseling, and follow-up'' to address ``personal problems including but not
limited to depression, alcoholism and other drug dependence, marital and family
problems, financial, legal and health issues. These assessment/referral
services are free of charge [to employees].''

Manhattan Engineer District. Official name of the now-famous effort, now
generally called the Manhattan Project, to make the first atomic bombs. The
overall director from September 1942 until the end of 1946 was General Leslie
R. Groves. The first full-time director of the project, assigned to it in June
1942, had been Col. James Marshall. During Marshall's dilatory leadership of
the project, Groves, working in the Construction Branch of the Army Services of
Supply, had handled funding of the project. At the time, the project was
called Designated Substitute Materials. Groves felt that this name would
arouse curiosity, and changed the name to the presumably more dull-sounding
Manhattan Engineer District. (Groves was also a colonel at the time; when he
was assigned to run MED, he sought a promotion. Apparently his argument was
that with just a colonel's rank, he wouldn't be able to command the respect of
the scientists he'd be working with. He was promoted to brigadier general.)

My source for the preceding information and opinion is William Lawren's The
General and the Bomb: A Biography of General Leslie R. Groves, Director of the
Manhattan Project (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1988).

``Manhattan Engineer District'' rings slightly odd -- one might have expected
``Engineering.'' It might be that military dialects have a greater preference
for uninflected modifiers. Te only evidence I can adduce offhand is that a
designation like ``X Corps,'' which a civilian like me would read ``tenth
corps,'' is actually pronounced ``ten-corps.''

The original ``substitute materials'' name is reminiscent of the name the
British had for their project -- ``Tube Alloys.'' That project, faster off the
blocks than its American counterpart, was run by the MAUD committee. The MAUD
name had its origin in a misunderstood personal name, in a telegram sent by
Niels Bohr. (In 1940, after Germany occupied Denmark, he wired that he was
still okay at his institute in Copenhagen. The message said to tell COCKROFT
and MAUD RAY KENT. Cockroft was obviously Sir John Cockroft, the physicist,
but no one knew any Maud Ray Kent. It turned out to be Maud Ray, of Kent,
who had once been Bohr's children's English tutor.)

Dr. Lee T. Pearcy (at the Episcopal Academy, in
Devon and Merion, PA) for many years maintained the Ancient Medicine /
Medicina Antiqua (AM/MA) site and the
MEDANT-L mailing list. In mid-April 2004, with slight name shortenings, the
site (name now in Latin only) and list (minus hyphen-L, or should I say minus
minus el?) moved. They are now
hosted by the Wellcome Trust Centre for
the History of Medicine at UCL. If you want to
continue potentially receiving postings, you have to resubscribe.

``Medicina Antiqua'' -- hmmm, that looks like Latin... I guess it's what they call ``Medical Latin.''
It seems to mean `old medicine.' Be sure to throw out your old medicines when
they're past their expiration dates.

Medef, MEDEF

Mouvement des Entreprises de France.
Whew, man! I spent hours before I figured out how they got exactly
those letters in that order. Medef is the employers' organization of France.
It excludes the government, in some sense, but some of the members are hybrids
of private and public organizations.

La Tribune reported April 16, 2003, that a ``recent'' survey indicated
that 64% of Americans were less favorable to French businesses or products
since the events in advance of the war in Iraq; 29% described themselves as
inclined to boycott or avoid (``boycotter ou eviter,'' but I guess that wasn't
the wording in the survey) French products.

At a regular news conference April 15, 2003, Ernest-Antoine Seillière,
President of Medef, had some interesting instructions for Americans. I'm going
to get the ipsissima verba, just wait. Well, it seems he had a lot to
say. Here's an excerpt:

[A rather inexpert construal: `It makes no sense to mix the anger over
differences with France and its diplomacy with French products and services.
One wants to say to American businesses: do not attack our perfumes, our
yogurts, or our planes.']

This reminds me of a conversation I had at the Student Union building (called
La Fortune) with Gary in 2001 or 2002, discussing the pros and cons of bombing
some country (a particular one, but I can't remember which). After he
described one of the arguments, I commented that by a parallel reasoning, we
should probably bomb France. He told me that I wasn't the first person to
suggest that to him, so far that week.

mediaeval

Gosh, it's amazing. Forty years ago, this version of medieval was
dominant in Commonwealth spelling and not unusual in US spelling. No longer.
Googling on medieval
today (2002.08.20) yields about 2,640,000 pages; mediaeval yields
140,000, a ratio of almost 19. In contrast, the encyclopedia/encyclopaedia
ratio is about 9, pediatric/paediatric about 6.5, fetus/foetus about 4, and the
archeology/archaeology ratio 1/7 (the ae spelling dominates). I suppose
mediaeval lends itself to false analysis
(media + evil > eval). Is this
bad? The ae in archaeology does serve to suggest the hardness of
the preceding ch.

medical we

Use of first-person plural pronouns with the meaning of second-person
singular. How are we feeling today?

We should not confuse the medical we with the obstetrical or
pregnant we.

Some information on musical medleys, dubiously so called by me, is at the silent movie entry; some medleys dubiously so
called by the music industry are discussed at the
seamless entry. Some information on swimming
medleys is at this IM entry. It may be inferred
from the aberemurder entry that those do not
exhaust the uses of the word.

MED-PED

``Make Early Diagnoses--Prevent Early Deaths''
Program to track down those at risk for the genetic disorder
FH that often kills men in their forties and
women in their fifties. For information, send SASE to

Program is run by Internal Medicine Prof. Roger R. Williams of Un. of Utah
in Salt Lake City. (Same address as MED-PED.)

Med-Ped

MEDical-PEDiatrics. ``A new specialty,'' according to the flyer in my
smailbox. Doesn't rhyme: second e is long, as in pediatrics.

meds

Slang term for MEDicineS. Like hubby this seems to be a British
import. They should have been quarantined. In standard English (i.e.,
my or high American dialect), medicine is generally uncountable; if you need a
countable term use drug.

MEDTEXT

MEDieval TEXt (mailing list).

MEE

Migration-Enhanced Epitaxy. Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) performed while alternately closing all anion or
all cation sources. Under appropriate conditions, the purely anionic atoms and
cationic atoms do not form stable solids, so only a surface layer accumulates.
The surface layer is not immediately incorporated in the bulk, so its atoms
have time to diffuse into a more defect-free configuration. Layer thickness
can be controlled very precisely.

Meech Lake

A toponym that evolved into Meach Lake. Then in the early 1980's,
officials of Gatineau Park reaffirmed the original spelling. I saw this
explained a few years ago in a page I can no longer find at the
Natural Resources Canada website.
However, as it's in P.Q., its official name is actually Lac
Meech -- to spooner with ``mock leash,'' for all I know.

Meech Lake was the site of a meeting in late April and early May of 1987 that
gave the place a few years of drab fame. At that meeting, the provincial
premiers and
various noisy interested parties reached final agreement on a set
of constitutional reforms that were called the
the Meech Lake
Accord. The Accord was a real compromise: most parties agreed to it with
reluctance.

Some were more reluctant than others. There was a deadline for approval of
midnight at the end of June 23, 1990, and the Accord is usually said to have
died on Friday, June 22, 1990, when Manitoba and Newfoundland ``failed to
approve it.'' In Newfoundland the premier reneged on an earlier commitment and
refused to allow the Accord to be put to a vote of the provincial parliament
(``House of Assembly''). In Manitoba, an earlier parliamentary maneuver by
native Indian legislator Elijah Harper also prevented passage before the
deadline. (Under Canada's constitution, amendments require, in addition to
approval by the federal parliament, either a bare majority or perfect
agreement. That is, approval of seven provinces representing 50% of the
population, or approval of all (ten, in 1990) provinces. The full Accord
could only have been passed according to the stricter standard. It would have
been possible in a revote to pass some parts with seven provinces. These parts
could have included the clause recognising Quebec as a ``distinct society''
(largely symbolic when standing alone, I would think). In the event, there
was no enthusiasm for that approach.

[There might be some interesting metalegal issues, since Quebec had rejected
the constitution which specified how it and the other provinces might approve
the constitutional amendments. But maybe the authority of the BNA Act takes
care of that detail. Maybe they should have tried the American way. Under the
Articles of Confederation, amendments to the Articles required approval by all
the states. The Continental Congress (the national government under the
Articles) called a convention to consider amendments, and that convention in
the Summer of 1787 reported out an entirely new constitution. An
interesting aspect of that document was that it defined the conditions under
which it would come into force, and those conditions were weaker (approval of
nine states only) than those defined by the pre-existing Articles. The fun
part was in 1790, when the Senate of the new government (approved by 12 states)
passed an embargo on Rhode Island to encourage it to reconsider its earlier
rejection of the US Constitution. The threat of embargo worked so well that
it wasn't necessary for the House to pass the legislation.]

The Accord was one of various efforts, this one by Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney (Progressive Conservative), to get Quebec to accept the
Canada Act (a/k/a the
Constitution Act of 1982). The failure of the Accord stoked Quebec
separatist feeling; Lucien Bouchard, until then an ally of Mulroney, left the
PC and formed the separatist Bloc Québécois.

MEED

Middle East Economic Digest. A journal whose main editorial
offices are in London.

MEEK

MEEKathara, Australia. The code used by IMS
(the International Monitoring System) for the seismic station there.

MEETUS

There's a parked meetus.com domain,
and I can't wait to find out what it's all about. I'm so anxious to find out
that I'm alterrnately hopping around and rocking side-to-side on the balls of
my feet. My feet are starting to hurt. I'm glad the name is spelled with ee
instead of ea -- that might really hurt.

MEF

The Middle East Forum. ``[A] think
tank [which] works to define and promote American interests in the Middle
East.'' Founded in 1990; became an independent organization in 1994. No, I
don't know what it was part of from 1990 to 1994. It has published a
Quarterly since March 1994.

MEF

Mouse Embryonic Fibroblast.

MEGA

Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels
Gesamtausgabe.
`Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Collected Production.' I don't know why this
series was named with the noun Ausgabe, which normally means `output.'
It includes at least some manuscripts that may have been for personal use and
not intended directly for publication (i.e., they did not look like
drafts of works intended for publication). The usual term Gesamtwerke
(`collected works') would certainly have covered drafts of unpublished work,
and I think the rest as well.

A Hebrew word meaning `scroll.' All Hebrew books (all books in any
language, afaik) were in the form of scrolls before the invention of the codex,
and today the torah used for ritual purposes
(i.e., which is read from during Jewish services) is in the form of a
scroll.

Every synagogue has a cabinet at the center of the front wall. The cabinet
holds Torah scrolls in an upright position, normally around chest height, and
is called the aharon hakodesh in Hebrew or by the generic but now nicely
archaic term ark in English. Each of the scrolls individually contains
a complete copy of the pentateuch. The scrolls have to be very carefully
hand-written on parchment, so they're kind of expensive, but they look pretty
and make a great donation to the synagogue. Also, they eventually wear out and
have to be buried, and after many centuries they make great archaeological
discoveries.

Even though each scroll is complete, each synagogue needs two for a festival
called Simchat Torah. (There's no English ch sound in Hebrew; the ch
represents a hard aitch. The spelling Simhat Torah also occurs.
Another traditional spelling is Simchas Torah. The final s represents
the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the Hebrew letter sav -- tav in Sephardi
pronunciation.) The name Simchat Torah is typically translated
`rejoicing in the Torah.' (Simha, `joy,' is also a common boy's given
name.)

The practice of reading the Pentateuch completely over the course of each year
became established in the Gaonic period, and the festival of Simchat Torah was
created to celebrate completion of the reading on the 22nd or 23rd of the month
of Tishri. At least as early as the tenth century
C.E., it became common to start reading again on
the same day ``to refute the devil.'' That is, to avoid negative inferences
from the fact that one is celebrating the end and not the beginning of the
reading. Hence, on this festival, the reading of the Pentateuch ends and
begins again immediately. Having a scroll that is turned to the beginning
saves having to spend time rolling back the scroll that has just been finished.

But I didn't write this entry to tell you any of that. It's just, you know,
background. Like noise.

So anyway... back in the day, the separate books of the Bible were in multiple
scrolls. However, there are other words one can use for Bible books, such as
sefer (which means `book'). Nevertheless, five books of the Torah
are referred to by the term megillah (`scroll,' remember?).
These are the five shortest books of the Ketuvim: Song of Songs, Ruth,
Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, collectively hamesh megillot
(`five scrolls').

Of the five scrolls, only the book of Esther has megillah as a
traditional part of its name: Megillat Ester. (The final t in the first
word is a standard inflection in compounds. You saw the same thing above with
simha and simhat. The th in the standard English spelling of
Esther just reflects an attempt to indicate aspiration in the original Hebrew,
but aspiration is no longer phonemic in Hebrew.) The Scroll of Esther is also
distinguished from the other megillot in its prominent association with
a holiday. (It is read during Purim, a late-Winter/early-Spring holiday. Less
salient is the reading of the Song of Songs during Passover.)

For these reasons, the word megillah, used without qualification or
prior specification, refers to the Scroll of Esther. It is not unusually
long, but it is longer than a typical Torah reading in a traditional service
(to say nothing of the one-third-length readings in a Reform service). This is
the reason usually given for the fact that the word megillah in Yiddish,
when used in a nonritual context, means `long story.' Now you see why it was
appropriate for me to give you ``the whole megillah'' in this entry.

Let me just add that the Talmud records arguments regarding whether Esther
should be a canonical book. There was substantial resistance to its inclusion
in the canon, an important reason being the absence of any mention of God.

A Japanese word usually translated `enlightened rule' or somesuch, and the
name assigned to the new Japanese emperor's era on October 23, 1868.

Meissner effect

A type-I superconductor expels all magnetic flux lines--the magnetic
induction B more than a few times the penetration depth within it
is zero. This is not diamagnetism: rather than being weak, the
magnetization M completely cancels magnetic field H.

MEK

Methyl Ethyl Ketone, traditional name for butanone.
Often known familiarly as ``ketone.'' Methyl methyl ketone
(propanone) is traditionally called acetone.

\
\==O
/
/
\
\

mél

One French word for email. It was originally created as an acronym for
message électronique, but was widely supposed to be
a phonetic transcription (i.e., a transliteration) of the English word
mail. Particularly under that assumption, it is deemed a rather ugly
néologisme.

I've read someone's recollection that the Canadian term courriel was already in widespread use
in .fr (along with l'anglicisme email
et le mot franglaisémail)
before mél was coined, and that this was created at France
Telecom. Whatever its origin, the em-word was
promoted by the French Academy, and in 1997 the
French Ministère de la culture
et de la communication accepted the Academy's recommendation. (A
governmental ``Ministry of Culture'' -- what a concept!)

A written abbreviation of the French term
message électronique. According to French
government recommendation (link in previous
entry), it is to be used only to introduce or indicate an email address (as
one may write Tél. before a telephone number), and not as
a noun.

In order to become a member, it is not necessary to have read the Odyssey
in its original Greek version, particularly if a
first edition is not available in codex.

MEMCO

Miller Electric Manufacturing COmpany.

MEMCON

MEMorandum of CONversation. US governmentese. Possibly used only by the
military and spooks.

memo

Short for MEMOrandum. Ultimately from the
Latin verb memorare, `to remember.' It
originally appeared in 13th-century English documents as part of phrases like
memorandum est, `it is to be remembered.' Initially, the single word
memorandum was used as a shortened form of the phrase, as we might
nowadays write ``IITBR that.'' Somewhat disconnected from this etymology is
the earliest recorded noun use (as short for
``Exchequer Memoranda Rolls'') dating to the twelfth century. The general noun
use, in various senses referring to written records or notes, began to be
common only late in the 13th c. and took some time to become the more
common sense than IITBR.

Memorial

Memorial University College (abbreviated
MUC). Founded in St. John's, Newfoundland,
in 1925; named in honor of ``those who served'' in the Great War. Technically, given the normal sense
of the word memorial, I suppose the name only honored those who
had served and died. The way trench warfare went, however, that wasn't
a big distinction. By now it is quite probably a completely moot one.
In point of fact, what was memorialized, or at least the event that
motivated the movement for a memorial, was a day of typically horrific
WWI loss of life, July 1, 1916. In under a
half hour on the morning of that day, seven of every eight members of
the Royal Newfoundland Regiment became a casualty (233 dead, 91
missing, 386 wounded, from an initial strength of 801). That day has
been observed in Newfoundland and Labrador as Memorial Day since then.
For a pre-confederation history of the university, see M. MacLeod's
A Bridge Built Halfway: A History of
Memorial University College, 1925-50 (Montréal and Kingston,
1990).
Images here.

Memorial University of
Newfoundland. The name adopted in 1949, the year Newfoundland became a part of Canada. Since 1949 also, ``Memorial Day'' has
been the official name of Canada Day in the province.
In 2001 the university's press published In Altum: Seventy-Five
Years of Classical Studies in Newfoundland, commemorating the 75th
birthday of the university's classics department. James T. Chlup of
the University of Manitoba, reviewing
the volume for BMCR, remarked that
``[t]o honour a department may seem unusual, but to a Canadian
Classicist it makes perfect sense. It is a celebration that a vibrant
department has been able to endure the extreme difficulties felt by
most Canadian Classics departments in the 1980s and 1990s.'' Mark
Joyal, who edited the volume, provided an introductory essay outlining
the history of the department, with an essay on the teaching of ancient
Greek in Newfoundland schools up to 1924. [Chlup:
``... fascinating reading as it charts the birth and growth of
Classics at MUN (and the college in general, for it was an axial part
of the institution in its early years).''] A very lightly
modified version of Joyal's essay is on the Classics department
website at MUN.

Memorial University. The name
preferred by the Board of Regents now that the name of the province
is Newfoundland and Labrador. That decision
was announced in March 2002, but over a year later, it seemed there'd
been no change. It was beginning to look like a victory for leaving
well enough alone, but checking back in 2007, I saw that the change had
finally gone through.

memoriaru sekusuresu

A bit of wasei-eigo (`Japanese-made
English'): a compound of the English words `memorial sexless.' It was one of
many terms (and the only wasei eigo) mentioned in an article in the
Mainichi Daily News in 2005. An English translation, entitled ``From `past
beauty' to `buddy pregnancy,' changes transform Japanese ladies' lexicons'' is
still available on
the web. The term was defined thus: ``a term used for normally sexless
couples who decide to go in for a little bit of slap and tickle on momentous
occasions, such as anniversaries or to mark such occasions as their team
winning a sports championship.'' I asked a Japanese lady friend about this
in April 2007, and it's not part of her lexicon. The construction of the term
doesn't even make any more sense to her than it does to me, but then she might
be handicapped by knowing English.

The referenced article, dated October 31, begins ``Times are tough for Japanese
women, according to Sunday Mainichi (11/13) [I guess they got a preview],
which notes that a whole new vocabulary has sprung up to cope with all the
different sorts of changes they're facing in their lives.'' The rest of the
article is a glossary of terms, including a couple that I think could be
generally useful or at least transferable to a different cultural context.
They will be listed below after I add them.

Memphis

People from Memphis, Tennessee are called ``Memphians.''

What, you want more? Okay, the Userkare
and gupta entries have some information
(mostly about the Egyptian Memphis). Memphis is also mentioned at the MOMA entry.

MEMRI

Middle East Media Research Institute.
``Bridging the language gap between the Middle East and the West.''
(Translations available in English, French, German, Hebrew, Spanish, and
Japanese. The German site was down when I visited in March 2007.)

An obsolete verb that mostly meant ``to beg for.'' Hence ``mendicant
orders'' -- religious orders whose members live on charity. (As opposed, say,
to parish priests, who are paid for a service.) From the Latin, mendicare `to beg.' This could obviously
have no connection with mendacious. I mean,
why would a beggar lie?

mendicity

What a lovely word! It basically means mendicancy: the condition or
practice of beggary. But it sounds like mendacity, and in some accents
it's probably indistinguishable. Therefore, I'm going to take the position
that the word is not obsolete, as widely supposed. It continued in use but no
one realized it.

Mendoza's Guitars

Mendoza isn't there anymore, hasn't been any time since I moved here (no
connection). The proprietor is Richard Wisner. It's at 241 US-33, mailing
address South Bend, IN 46637. Anyway, it's really in Roseland, a little
village of restaurants serving the University of Notre
Dame. Mendoza's is just north of the Taco Bell, on the southbound side of
the street less than a mile before the Denny's and the Perkin's. (Hey -- I
recognize that zip code! That's my zip code! Just to give you an idea
how big Roseland is: I'm not in Roseland. There's a larger place called
Rosemont, Illinois, around O'Hare Airport.
They went dry around 1999 or so -- not by passing any law against alcohol
sales, but by taking back all the restaurants' liquor licenses.)

Mendoza's telephone number is (574) 272-7510. I only put this entry in
the glossary at all because I lose the phone book more easily than the laptop.
It's making this one of the most frequently edited areas of the glossary.

They also sell harmonicas.

You know, when Mendoza did own the store, he sold photographic equipment.
Mr. Wisner changed the merchandise and the product-word part of the store name
when he took over.

MEng

Master of ENGineering (graduate program). Has a more practical/project
orientation than MS, and is more likely not
to require completion of a thesis. Pronounced ``em-enj'' (stress pattern
varies). Cf.Ed.D.

Medium (altitude) Earth Orbit. Earth orbit intermediate between
typical LEO and GEO
(geostationary). It's cheaper to loft a satellite into MEO than GEO,
and it's easier than LEO to use for communication because it doesn't drift
eastward so fast. A compromise.

Member of the European Parliament. Writing in a letter to the editor
published in the Jan. 9, 1997 issue of the New York Review of Books (NYRB), Glyn Ford, a Labour MEP for Greater
Manchester East, defends the European Parliament in these terms:

Yes, it's weak, but not entirely without influence[,] as the hordes
of Lobbyists that infest its corridors demonstrate.

MEP

Minority Engineering Program. Here's a
link to the one at Notre Dame University (ND).

MilliEQuivalent. One one-thousandth of an equivalent. A chemical unit.
Yes, I could have written just "One thousandth," but I didn't. I'm
not going to waste time thinking about it. Let the half-dozen or half-a-dozen
or so daily visitors to this page worry about it.

What the pros say is ``10-3 equivalents.'' That's right: plural
form. Okay, some say equivalent. You could analyze grammatical number thus:
instead of the traditional singular/dual/plural and singular/plural
distinctions that many languages have developed, what the modern world may
need is a fractional/singular/plural analysis. The traditional fractional
form of foobar is the periphrastic construction of a foobar.
For some people, maybe the declined form is identical with the plural.

MER

Mars Exploration
Rover[s]. A NASA mission consisting of two
rovers launched separately in Summer 2003. After the failure of previous NASA
Mars landers, and the loss in December 2003 of an ESA landing mission that used braking and landing
strategies generally similar to those of NASA's MER (ESA's mission was called
Mars Express), it was a relief verging on surprise when both rovers landed
successfully in January 2004.

MER

Monthly Energy Review. Don't go through back issues of this; look
in the AER.

As the proprietary tyrannies of the Middle East rock our economic boat, it
might be worth noting that seasickness is mal de mer.

From Latin[corpus] mercurium
captans, `mercury-seizing [substance].' The term was introduced by
William Christopher Zeise (that's the name in his native Danish, so help me) in
an article in Annalen der Physik und Chemie, vol. 31, p. 378
(1834), for a class of chemicals that since then have also been called
sulfur alcohols, thioalcohols and later thiols.

The term mercaptan has also been used specifically for the ethyl mercaptan, or
ethanethiol. This is identical with ethanol, except that the oxygen atom in
ethanol (older name: ethyl alcohol) is replaced with a sulfur atom in
ethanethiol:

Looked at in terms of functional groups, ethanethiol is identical
with ethanol except that the hydroxyl group (-OH) is replaced by a sulfhydryl
group (-SH). In addition to the organic nomenclature, a few generations of
which have been described to this point, there are distinct inorganic
nomenclatures, according to which something bonded to SH is a hydrosulfide (or
a foobar hydrogen sulfide).

The thiol group is more strongly acidic than a hydroxyl group, and thiols react
not with other metals besides mercury to form salts. The mercury salts are
highly insoluble.

Cysteine is the only thiol among the twenty standard amino acids. (Methionine
is the only other one that contains sulfur. It's a thioether.)

Mercado Común
del Sur. I've seen this translated as `Southern Common Market.'
That probably conveys the connotation of the Spanish name better does a literal
translation like `Common Market of the South,' even though a `southern' is most
directly a trranlation of sureño.

Mercosur was originally a freeish trade zone in the southern cone, encompassing
South America's two largest economies (Brazil and
Argentina) as well as the interstitial countries
Uruguay and Paraguay.
Chile and Bolivia had become associate members by
2002, when Brazil was having some monetary problems and Argentina was in
economic meltdown. Argentina all-but defaulted on its debts, and has been
recovering under leftist president Kirshner. (In the wake of the worldwide
financial meltdown -- shall we say anneal? -- of 2008, Argentina is recovering,
perhaps, under Kirshner's successor and wife.)

When Mercosur met late in 2002, the agenda was mapping strategy for its
eventual integration into FTAA. FTAA talks
broke down. On July 4, 2006, agreements were signed in Caracas to make
Venezuela (third-largest South American economy) a member of Mercosur. Its
membership became official at ceremonies in Cordoba, Argentina, on July 22,
with Fidel Castro, then totalitarian dictator of Cuba, as honored guest.
Happily, the trip and festivities seem to have critically stressed the old man,
who was hospitalized after he got home.

You're the last person left on your block who still won't pony up for cable
(CATV), and this is what your neighbors say about
you behind your back. They don't really resent you much for not doing your
part to amortize the cost of tearing up the sidewalk to install the cable.
Mostly, they just contemn you for being penny
wise and pound foolish. You think you're saving money, but really you're
missing out on secret specials advertised only on cable. What a chump!

More important, though, is what you're missing out in the shared experience of
the community. Standing in line at the supermarket checkout, everyone around
you is talking about last night's HBO made-for-TV
movie special. You stare at your footwear; you can't relate any more. You
don't even recognize the faces on the covers of the tabloids. Without a cable
to tie you to the community, you are unmoored, a rootless stranger.

People are beginning to use the word `rebel' when they talk about you, and they
don't mean it in a nice way, like James Dean, or Robert E. Lee, or the
Unabomber. People say ``It's a free country, but....''

Every day when the cable guy comes to check that you don't have an illegal
hookup, he talks with the neighbor kids. Halloween is coming.

Remember what the song says:

Conform or be cast out!

One of these Sundays the preacher is going to deliver a coruscating sermon on
the sin of pride, and he won't be looking at anyone but you. All around, your
fellow parishoners will sidle uneasily away, and on the near end of the pew,
an old woman will fall off and fracture her pelvis.

I blush to give its true meaning. If you're over age eighteen, you could look
it up. If anyone peeks over your shoulder, pretend you're studying the
merl entry. Make sure to actually read and remember that too, so your
story checks out. As you leave the library, shout back at the circ desk, ``I always wondered what merl
meant!''

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. An often-fatal respiratory illness first
reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, and found to be caused by a corona virus
designated MERS-CoV. As of April 2014, Saudi Arabia was still the country with
by far the largest number of cases. (According to the WHO as of April 21, of
243 confirmed cases across the planet, 231 have been in Saudi Arabia.
The total number of cases rose above 300 that month.

It is extremely dangerous. To wit: according to the
MERS page of the US
CDC,
``[m]ost people who have been confirmed to have MERS-CoV infection developed
severe acute respiratory illness. They had fever, cough, and shortness of
breath. About half of these people died.'' (Emphasis added.)
The text of that page, visited April 2014, had last been updated the previous
February. Things have taken alarming turn. Cutting to the chase:

``It took more than two years to reach the first 100 cases of MERS,'' said
Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and
Policy at the University of Minnesota. ``Now, in just the past two weeks,
we've had 100 cases. There's a major change occurring that cannot just be
attributed to better case detection,'' he said. ``When humans readily transmit
to humans, that's what will cause a worldwide outbreak. We are very concerned
that ... with what we've seen over the past two weeks ... we may be at that
point now.'' [Quoted in the Saudi
Gazette, April 26.]

[Let's enjoy a little technical interlude on this. Suppose an is
the number of new cases found in the nth fortnight, where n is loosely defined
by a0 = 1. If an increases perfectly
geometrically (a/k/a exponentially) with n, by a factor r per fortnight, then
there will have been
SN := a0 ( rN - 1 ) / (r - 1)
total cases in N fortnights (i.e., in the 0 through N-1st intervals).
iOne hundred cases in the first two years implies that the expression above
equals 100 for N=52 (S52 = 100), for r value between 1.023 and 1.024, which is more than
precise enough for our purposes. (More precision is available on request. Use
PayPal!) The important take-away is that this is a slow rate of increase. The
real process is noisy (and the experimental data
are reported as integer values of an, which cannot exactly fit the
formula except for integral -- and very alarming -- values of r). However,
even if we take N as low 26, the increase per fortnight is still only 9%.
Under reasonable assumptions, then, by the time that there are 100 new cases in
a fortnight, there will have been more than about 90 the previous fortnight.
Under the precise assumption of (S52 = 100, etc.), the
first fortnightly interval with 100 new cases would have been after the 197th
fortnight and about 4200 previous cases.]

The Saudi Health Ministry announced on April 25, 2014, that the total number of
cases reported (in the kingdom) since the first case in September 2012 was 313,
with 92 deaths in that time. (That makes it seem as if the mortality rate was
below 30%, but this ignores the fact that many (at least a third) of cases are
recent. There had been a jump in the rate of new infections in the preceding
weeks, with health care workers forming a large proportion of the people newly
infected. I don't understand how that might have come about. It's hard to
believe that health care workers throughout KSA simultaneously started getting
careless; perhaps there's a new strain.

``Approximately 75 percent of the
recently reported cases ... have acquired the infection from another case
through human-to-human transmission,'' according to Ala Alwan, regional
director for the Eastern Mediterranean of the World Health Organization. ``The
majority of these secondary cases have been infected within the health care
setting and are mainly health care workers, although several patients are also
considered to have been infected with MERS-CoV while in hospital for other
reasons.''
MERS is very dangerous, and news in April 2014 suggests it has suddenly become a much
greater danger (see ``It took...'' below).

The Saudi Health Ministry announced on April 25, 2014, that the total number of
cases reported since the September 2012 was 313, with 92 deaths in that time.
So it would appear that the mortality is below 30%, except that many (at least
a third) of cases are recent. There had been a jump in the rate of new
infections in the preceding weeks, with health care workers forming a large
proportion of the people newly infected. ``Approximately 75 percent of the
recently reported cases ... have acquired the infection from another case
through human-to-human transmission,'' according to Ala Alwan, regional
director for the Eastern Mediterranean of the World Health Organization. ``The
majority of these secondary cases have been infected within the health care
setting and are mainly health care workers, although several patients are also
considered to have been infected with MERS-CoV while in hospital for other
reasons.'' (A recent study found that the virus has been ``extraordinarily
common'' in camels for at least 20 years, and may have been passed directly
from the animals to humans.)

According to an AFP reports on April 28,
scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, MA, identified
natural human antibodies that act against MERS-CoV. In laboratory studies
reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS),
researchers found that these neutralizing antibodies prevented a key part of
the virus from attaching to protein receptors that allow the virus to infect
human cells. A neutralizing antibody is one that not only recognizes a
specific virus but also prevents it from infecting host cells, so eventually
the infection is "cleared" from the individual.
Wayne Marasco, who led the research, added that an antibody-based treatment
for MERS would be administered by injection and could provide protection for
about three weeks.

MERS is considered a deadlier cousin of the
SARS virus that erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected
8,273 people, nine percent of whom died. It has also been considered
less transmissible than the SARS virus, but as of this writing (May 1, 2014), I
think it remains to be seen whether that is still so.

Mersenne numbers

Mersenne numbers are the numbers

Mn = 2n - 1.

Mn is called the nth Mersenne number.
If n is composite (i.e., not prime), then Mn is also
composite. This is obvious from the formula for the sum of a finite geometric
series, which we can rearrange slightly as

k k-1 k-2
r - 1 = ( r - 1 ) × ( r + r + ... + r + 1 ) .

Taking n =jk (by the assumption that n is composite) and
r = 2j yields the result q.e.d. As it happens, the first
few Mersenne numbers Mn for n prime are prime: n = 2, 3, 5, and
7 yield the Mersenne primes 3, 7, 31, and 127. However, the next Mersenne
number, M11 = 2047 = ×89.

One might think to define numbers

Ln = sn - 1,

say, with s a natural number greater than 2. Since the geometric sum formula
works for other numbers, one can easily make the parallel argument to shown
that in using Ln to search for primes, one can again focus only on
values of n that are also prime. However, it is immediately clear that all
such numbers Ln are composite: if s is greater than 2, then setting
r = s and k = n above immediately factorizes Ln.
Only s = 2 yields possible primes, because then
r - 1 = 1 and the formula doesn't yield a proper
factorization.

The Mersey is the main river that desagua into Liverpool Bay on the
Irish Sea. I can't remember the English word for desaguar, if there is
one. This isn't just irritating; it's troubling. In my experience, as
multilingual people age, they begin to remember certain words in only one or
some of the languages they use regularly. Really, though, neither `empty' nor
`drain' is as appropriate as desaguar.

mersh

A pejorative term for certain kinds of successful rock music, from
commercial, reflecting the anti-market pose of mass-market pop.
(No, that was not a facetious remark, really.)

In a letter to an aspiring young writer, Raymond Chandler once explained that
authentic slang ages very quickly, and that one way he made his dialogue
fresh and vibrant was by inventing his own slang [which would not age because
it was not current and so not hackneyed]. I have not taken this advice here.

Instead, in selfless devotion to the information of those who have recurred
to the wisdom of the Stammtisch, I have included this actual, and thus
ephemeral, slang term, harvested from a New Republic article (issue of
3 June 1996), on MTV's meretricious
get-out-the-youth-vote campaign, soon to rot in this very section of the em's.
There's hope, however, because the author was decidedly and by his own
admission unhip.

merch

Merchandise. Formed after the pattern of mersh, I suppose, and attested (used, even! --
apparently without irony) at the homesite of The Tragically Hip.

MEtal-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor
(FET). A JFET made in compound semiconductor.
MOSFET's are not made in these materials because compound semiconductors
tend not to have stable, useful oxides. The closest thing to a compound
semiconductor IGFET is a
HIGFET. [Cf.MODFET.]

MeSH

I've encountered this in contexts where I thought it meant methanthiol, but
it turns out to stand for MEdical Subject Heading, a controlled vocabulary
defined by the (US) National Library of Medicine (NLM).

MESSENGER

MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging (NASA spacecraft). Launched in August 2004, it is the
first spacecraft to visit the planet Mercury since NASA's Mariner 10 mission in
the mid-1970's. MESSENGER's first fly-by took place on January 14, 2008, its
second on October 6, 2008. A third fly-by is scheduled for 2009, and the plan
is for the spacecraft to become a satellite of Mercury on March 18, 2011.

The planet Mercury takes its name from, and is associated in mythology with,
the Roman god Mercury (Mercurius in Latin, Hermes in Greek).
Mercury was characteristically represented with what we call ``winged feet''
(feet with small wings above each heel) and credited with great speed (don't
ask me ``compared to what?''). This led to the name's attachment to the only
element that is liquid at room temperature (a/k/a quicksilver, Hg). [If gallium
is liquid at your room's temperature, open a window.] The speed thing is
associated with Mercury's traditional godly bailiwick, as god of thieves and
messengers.

But even if Mercury hadn't been the god of messengers, NASA might still have
created an acronym using ``geochemistry.'' There doesn't seem to be an alternative term
that doesn't involve a ``geo-'' prefix.

messing with the merchandise

For some reason, I didn't believe one should date students, though that
certainly didn't impede many of my colleagues.

[P. 53 of William O'Rourke's On Having a Heart Attack: A Medical
Memoir (2006). O'Rourke is a professor in the English Department at the
University of Notre Dame in Indiana, a Catholic school that has strict rules
about the subject of the quote. O'Rourke also writes fiction.]

National MetaCenter for Computational Science and Engineering.
(q.v.).

``A coalescence of intellectual and physical resources unlimited by
geographical constraint, a synthesis of individual centers that will
create a new resource greater than the sum of its parts. ...
The goals of the MetaCenter are to give scientists and engineers the
ability to move their problems directly to appropriate computer
architectures without regard for where the computers are located; to
develop a national file system that gives researchers direct access to
their files regardless of where they are located; and to design a common
user interface that allows researchers to use the same commands on all
systems at all centers.'' (This is an example, but not the worst, of
proposalese.)

Deciding whether to decide. I was inspired to create this entry by some
news, if that's what it is, on March 5, 2008. The previous day a cluster
of presidential primaries had assured Senator John Wayne McCain of Arizona a
majority of delegates at the Republican convention. This triggered the usual
spate of speculations and questions regarding the VP preference of the
candidate apparent. The
New York Times reported that ``Mr. McCain and several senior campaign
advisers insist that there is no short list of names, and no process to help
him make his choice -- merely a process to find a process. He directed his
campaign to study past methods.''

This reminded me of Walter ``Fritz'' Mondale's similar rhetorical dance in
1984. Mondale, who had been Vice President in the administration of Jimmy
Carter (1977-1981) was leading in the race for the Democratic nomination; Gary
Hart, a US Senator from Colorado, was in second place. Rev. Jesse Jackson was
a distant but respectable third place in the delegate race, and the question
had been raised whether Hart or Mondale would consider him as a running mate.

Here is a relevant excerpt from the Democratic Presidential debate on June 3 of
that year, as quoted in the New York Times the next day. (The debate was held
at the NBC studios in Burbank, California, and moderated by Tom Brokaw. All
three candidates for the nomination were asked related questions, but only
Mondale's answer is relevant to this entry.)

Mr. Mondale: I think that the important point here is to put in place a
process. I'm not including, or excluding, anybody. I know something about the
Vice Presidency; I think it's the most important decision that a candidate for
President ever makes, because it's fateful in many, many respects. And I'm
going to wait until the nominating process is over, and then I'm going to put
in place a search. I promise to look for women candidates, I promise to look
at minority candidates, I promise to look across the board and pick the best
possible person I can find.

Mr. Brokaw: Why shouldn't the voters know now whom you are considering?
After all, you tell us what you think about just about everything else in the
world, and in the last 25 years we've had four Vice Presidents go on to become
President, we've had one resign because of scandal, a choice in the Democratic
Party could not get to the fall campaign because he'd not been checked out
thoroughly enough. Don't the voters deserve to know who you have in mind?

Mr. Mondale: Yes, if I had someone in mind, but I do not now. In other
words, I think that we've learned the hard way over the years that this choice
has to be made with great care. We have to look into the backgrounds of each
candidate, we have to look at compatibility with issues, we have to look at
their ability to share part of the burden of a President both internationally
and domestically. I've been Vice President, and I think one of the things that
people credit President Carter with is, once he was the putative nominee, he
looked all over the country, he checked all possibilities. In all humility, I
thought he came up with a wonderful choice!

I can't decide whether to end this entry without mentioning a certain lyric
from a Rush song written by Neal Peart. The song was first released on the
Permanent Waves album (1980), and its title was ``Freewill.'' (If you
will write it as two words, I think you are free to do so.)

Taylor developed one of the earliest tool
classification schemes, a mnemonic scheme for
metal-cutting tools.

metal fatigue

A major cause of catastrophic collapse in steel structures -- the slow
degradation of mechanical strength in metal by repeated deformation. Just
like what happens when you bend a paper clip back and forth a few times.
Thermal cycling can sometimes have the same effect on solder joints, but
mostly, solder joints fail because they were poorly made in the first
place.

metallic

Characteristic of a metal. Duh.

When Miss Prism instructed Cecily Cardew to read her Political Economy, she
instructed her charge to omit the chapter on the Fall of the Rupee.

It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their
melodramatic side.

metallurgical coal

Coal used in steel production.

metalorganics

Same as organometallics: compounds
of metals with organic compounds. Alkali metals hardly count and mere
salts of organic acids are sort of technically in, but not what one had
in mind.

metal resistivity

silver (Ag)

1.59 µohm-cm

copper (Cu)

1.67 µohm-cm

gold (Au)

2.35 µohm-cm

aluminum (Al)

2.65 µohm-cm

metametadeciding

Deciding whether to metadecide. You
know, I'm not sure if I really want to include this entry. It's a slippery
slope. We'd have to develop a notation like those for really big numbers. At
least we'd have to consider it.

metanalysis

A term coined by the linguist Otto Jespersen, meaning analysis of a word
or phrase into parts different from those it was originally compounded from.

I won't pretend to give a comprehensive analysis of the various types of
metanalysis (that might be a meta-analysis of metanalysis). But we do have a
number of examples in the glossary, and you should read all of those first
before you return to Google and look for a resource that is more to-the-point.

One kind of metanalysis (which some linguists prefer not to class as such) is
the discerning of a possible analysis where there isn't one. That is,
detecting two morphemes within one. These can arise from inflectional analysis
or folk etymology (history as ``his story,'' thence herstory).
An older example of folk etymology is lone, which arose from the
analysis of alone as a + lone. (It's really the compound
all + one. Cf. German allein.)

Given the limited inflectional morphology of English in
recent (i.e., the last thousand) years, many of the obvious examples
of inflectional metanalysis are back-formations from plurals or apparent
plurals. My favorite example of such a metanalysis is the derivation of
pea from pease. The entry for pea
describes this as well as clearer-cut instances of similar derivations of new
singular terms from misconstrued plurals (e.g.,base from
bases). Another example is aphid (from the
Latinaphides, plural of aphis). The
same thing happened to Latin antipodes (whence English antipode),
and antipodes wasn't even a plural. I couldn't neglect to mention
kudos, and sure enough I mention it at the
chaim.

In English, metanalysis of phrases often occurs where a word ends or begins in
n. Examples include adder (``a nadder''
misunderstood as ``an adder''). Also described at that entry is the more
complicated case of orange. Napron lost its initial n sometime
around the fifteenth century. The word auger was still commonly
nauger in the seventeenth century (the cognate word in Dutch also lost
its initial n.)

Metanalysis in the opposite direction (adding n from the end of a preceding
word) gave rise to nonce (see entry), but many
such metanalyses of this sort failed to take, or at least were ultimately
superseded by the original forms or their more direct descendants: nawl
(flourishing in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries), nuncle (from old-style
``mine uncle'' misunderstood as ``my nuncle,'' and similar expressions) and
naunt. The latter probably also count as baby-talk. In similar fashion, some
French dialects have nante (ma
nante metanalysis of mon ante). It is speculated that the modern
French tante arose from Old French t'ante (`thine aunt').

Mondegreens are often wilder than mere
metanalyses, but metanalysis is frequently a part of them. So have a look.

Coming attractions at this entry: assets, riding,
cyber-, German -keit.

There's a moment of Laurel and Hardy I recall when Stan spells not as
``en oh ott.'' I seem to recall it more than once; I mention this again at
this NO entry, but you can use the reminder.

metanonfiction

A mode of writing that comments on itself. This SBF glossary is an
example of metanonfiction. This particular entry is probably an instance of
metametanonfiction, but we (postmodern glossarist) are not going
to examine this idea very closely, or our cerebral cortex might implode.

metaphery

Transposition of organs within a flower. From the Greek roots meta
(`beyond, across, over') and pherein (to carry, bear'). Ancient Greek
texts attest both the verb metapherein and the noun metaphora
(`metaphor,' duh, into English via French).

metaphor

George Vecsey's column for Feb. 1, 1997 (in the
New York Times ``Sports Saturday'' section)
focuses on erstwhile New England Patriots coach
Bill Parcells, who resigned because he felt his freedom restricted by the
Patriots owner. He particularly resented not having any input in recruitment.
Parcells quoted a friend's comment, that ``if they're asking you to cook, they
should at least let you shop for some of the
groceries.'' George Vecsey devoted the column to
interviews with restauranteurs, who were more sympathetic than
NFL team owners. (Another sportswriter who is fun
to read is
Jason
Whitlock, who writes for the Kansas City Star and FOX Sports.)

The May 24, 2000, Critic's Notebook feature, by William Grimes, was
entitled ``Fill It Up, and Check the Olive Oil.'' It's about all the new
New York City restaurants having names that fit cars
better than restaurants. He tested his theory in interviews with marketing
people in the automobile industry. Beacon, ``the Midtown restaurant
that specializes in wood-grilled dishes,'' would probably by ``a more
economical car.'' Avra (Greek seafood) ``would probably be picked up by
Hyundai or Daewoo.'' Lex 303 (new in the Murray Hill neighborhood)
should be a high-performance European import, base price $38,995.

Okay, so we're drifting away from metaphor here. I'm just waiting to close the
circle, that's all. Just be glad I didn't explain how Victor's Pizzeria (on
Nassau Street in Princeton, NJ) got its name, the way I wasted your time at the
Mendoza's Guitars entry earlier.

For the etymology of metaphor, see metaphery. I mean, carry on to the other entry.

metaphor, reincarnated

That ought to be the term for dead metaphors brought back to life by
wordplay. I've seen a good one attributed to Lowell Weicker, Jr., to the
effect that the Republican party's moderate wing had become just a feather.
I haven't been able to track down a solid citation, however. The closest I've
found is by David Gergen, in a December 2003 review of Lewis L. Gould's One
Nation Divisible: Grand Old Party. Gergen wrote ``By 1980, the
GOP was moving more sharply to the right and was
bringing the country with it. For six presidential elections in a row from
Reagan through George W. Bush conservatives have now headed the Republican
ticket. And the moderate wing of the party looks more like a feather.'' (I want
to mention that Tony Feather is a Republican activist. There, I did it.)

Weicker so irked conservative columnist William F. Buckley that in his 1988
re-election bid, Buckley endorsed Democrat Joseph Lieberman and formed a
committee to fight Weicker's re-election bid. Lieberman won and Weicker left
the GOP, later running for and winning the office of Governor on an independent
ticket. That is probably relevant context to the wing-feather wordplay, if
Weicker really uttered it. There might be some more detail on this at the
CT entry.

What went around in 1988 came around in 2006. Lieberman became too moderate --
particularly on the issue of the war in Iraq -- for a large and energized
portion of the Democratic party. He faced a strong primary challenge from Ted
Lamont, yet polls suggested that as an independent running in the general
election, he would win handily. It was claimed that such an independent run
would put at least some Democratic candidates in a politically uncomfortable
position. Joe Courtney, the Democratic challenger for Connecticut's second US
Congressional district, when asked in mid-June whom he would endorse if it came
to that, expressed it thus: ``I'll jump off that bridge when I get to it.''
(Lieberman announced that he would pursue an independent candidacy if he lost
the August primary, and Lamont -- in his maiden attempt at statewide office,
beat Lieberman in the primary. In the event, Courtney and most other
Democratic candidates and office-holders supported Lamont in the general.)

We suspect the more voters learn about John Kerry's actual views, the more they
will be inclined to say: ``If this is a waffle, bring on the syrup.''

(Regarding these and other suspicions, one is reminded of Eisenhower's
observation that most of the worst things in politics don't happen.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to track this quote down.)

metaplasm

Altered spelling, usually understood as intentional -- respelling rather
than misspelling. Normally also the alterations are limited in scope to
substitution (e.g., ``Gawd'' for ``God'') and transpositions within one
or two adjacent syllables (for examples see the
metathesis entry), or by adding or
subtracting a syllable or letter. In other words, the metaplasmically modified
word must be recognizable, and not some anagram.

The term metaplasm came into Old English from post-classical Latin, as
metaplasmus, from the Hellenistic Greek (no Hellenic attestation,
apparently) nounmetaplasmós,
`reshaping.' A parallel but not very specific term from
Latin is transformation, but
transformatio does not seem to be (or have been) used systematically to
describe a figure of speech.
Given the vague etymological sense, it's not surprising that metaplasm
has been used to mean transposition of words from their usual order. Since the
word hyperbaton is already available to describe that figure, there is
little excuse for even the limited continuing use of metaplasm in such a
broad sense, and more than a hint of ignorance.

The term metaplasm has traditionally been used in learned discussions of
the classical languages. (Possibly in unlearned ones too, I suppose. Hey Pete,
when can you take my Chevy Lumina into the shop for a metaplasm? I want it
pimped it out with a- and -um fenders.) In the classical context it often
refers to changes associated with morphological features absent in Modern
English. In a typical example, a second-declension noun can be made
grammatically female with obvious changes in the endings (to turn it into a
first-declension noun). Not counted as metaplasmic, in this or any
other context, are the standard inflections of a word (plural, past tense,
etc.), or word formation by standard affixes.

In English, metaplasms are usually figures of speech.
(That is, English doesn't have any very regular morphological transformations,
so the changes are made free-style for some rhetorical or literary effect.)
Dog gone, for example, is a metaplasm of god damn. As a
euphemism it is technically a figure of speech. You could claim that it is now
so well established that many people use it without any consciousness of
avoiding the harsher or more offensive term, and that hence it is not a
euphemism and not a figure of speech. But I could then reply that fine -- then
it's no longer an alternate spelling but an alternate word, and hence not a
metaplasm either. I've got all the bases covered.

Gawd might be considered a euphemism in writing, but from my experience
of the English language as she is spoken (and I happen to hear her every day),
it is eye dialect.

In some cases -- particularly Middle English and Early Modern English, it can
be difficult to decide whether a variant spelling is really a metaplasm. A
relatively clear instance occurs (or possibly doesn't) in ``Two Noble
Kinsmen,'' act 5, sc. 1, ll. 45-7:

... our intercession then
Must be to him that makes the Campe a Cestron
Brymd with the blood of men ...

(Bold emphasis added. ``Cestron'' here obviously means cistern.
Shakespeare elsewhere used the spelling cestern (in ``Macbeth,''
``Othello,'' ``Antony and Cleopatra,'' as well as cesterns in
``The Rape of Lucrece''). He never spelled it cistern or
cistorn. It seems clear that cestron was not an ordinary
spelling variant. In principle, it might just be a misspelling, but that would
require postulating two discrete errors (ro for er) where a single one does not
occur elsewhere. It seems probably intentional, although the effect achieved,
beyond a kind of emphasis or vividness, is hard to describe. [I'm only basing
myself on the Spevack concordance (details below).
There's probably additional evidence to be gleaned from scholarly editions --
such as whether Folio and Quarto editions agree.]

For another, less convincing instance from Shakespeare, see the metathesis entry.

The Spevack concordance is six bound volumes of yellowing
paper with the common title A Complete and Systematic Concordance to the
Works of Shakespeare, edited or overseen or something by Marvin Spevack,
output by an IBM 7094, and published by Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung in
Hildesheim in 1969.

metathesis

The interchange of sounds within a word. As in ``cumfterble,'' ``eye-urn,''
and ``enviornment'' pernunciations of comfortable, iron, and
environment. Sort of a word-internal Spoonerism.
See also nookyuler.

If I think of any metatheses that don't involve an arr sound, I'll be sure to
add them. There's almug and
algum, but leafing through the Scrabble
dictionary, even if you've been challenged, looks a lot like cheating.
Okay, then, there's the English surname Apps, which arose by metathesis
from æspe, the original Old English word for aspen. Of
course, I would have preferred a pair of modern words -- something not
involving a surname -- and I know you would too, so I'll keep looking.

Oh yeah -- ask pronounced as ``ax'' and asterisk as ``Asterix.''
There seems to be a slightly broader pattern here: most English metatheses
involve an ess or arr sound. There's probably a good reason for this, and the
next time I see my spichiartist, I'll be sure to ask. For insensitive jokes
about dyslexics, based on preposterous metatheses, start reading (or stop
reading, if that's how you do it) at the
Dyslexic Occultist entry.
(Metatheses involving a sibilant like s and a velar or alveolar stop -- k and
t, resp. -- are relatively common. Different ancient Greek dialects sometimes
differed in the order of these sounds in various words.)

The rock musician Sly Stone (famous as leader of Sly and the Family Stone,
which had a great run at the end of the 1960's) was born Sylvester Stewart in
1947. He got the Sly nickname in school. Reportedly, a fellow fifth-grade
student made an error spelling it in a spelling bee (they asked for name
spellings in a spelling bee?) and afterwards other students teased him with it.
Frankly, it's not such an unusual nickname as to need a special derivation.
[According to this page,
``[t]he `Family Stone' came from the fact that Sly, his sister Rosie and
brother Freddie all adopted the stage name `Stone' when they formed their new
band.'' It is probably also worth noting that stone is a general
intensifier in Black English Vernaculars
(not just ``stone cold'' but ``stone drunk,'' ``stone in love,'' etc.), so
the choice was not arbitrary.]

Metathesis is sometimes intentional, as in the case of Sly Stone, perhaps. In
other words, metathesis can be a figure of speech.
(This metathesis is a special case of the more general deliberate misspelling
figure: metaplasm, q.v.)
It's a little tricky tracing this back in time in English, because English
spelling has never been entirely regular.

One instance occasionally adduced as a metathesis is from ``The Merry Wives of
Windsor,'' act 2, sc. 1. Pistol speaks these lines in a conversation with
Ford, warning him not to be the cuckold (ll. 117-9 or 122-4):

With liver burning hot. Frevent, or go thou,
Like Sir Acteon he, with Ringwood at thy heels:
O, odious is the name!

Some people seem to regard frevent as a metathesis of fervent,
perhaps related to the burning-hot liver. (That would make the location of the
word an instance of hyperbaton, but that is so common in Shakespeare as hardly
to merit mention.) It seems that most, however, take ``Frevent'' as a
typesetting error for ``Prevent,'' and this happens to make sense.

In ancient myth, Acteon was out hunting with his hounds and accidentally
encountered the goddess Diana while she was bathing naked. She turned him into
a stag and he was eventually devoured by his own dogs. That would make Acteon
the prototype of the voyeur punished. However, there was a legend that in some
villages in Europe (just never this one, apparently), a man was
collectively humiliated when his wife gave birth to a child recognizably not
his own. This must have been quite a burden on couples who shared a lot of
recessive genes. According to the tradition, there would be a parade in which
the supposed cuckold would be forced to wear antlers. There doesn't seem to be
any more evidence for this practice than for the Acteon-Diana story, but it did
give rise to expressions like ``wearing the horns of a cuckold.'' Since Acteon
wore antlers and suffered ignominiously, he came to be the representative
cuckold.

The main source for the myth of Acteon and Diana is Ovid's
Metamorphoses, book III. There the names of 31 hounds are given (there
are others too numerous to name). No, I don't have this entry mixed up with
the Baskin-Robbins entry. The last named hound is a shrill-voiced one named
Hylactor. Golding's
1567 translation (the first) into English of Ovid's Metamorphoses, and
Golding translated Hylactor as `Ringwood.' (The name Hylactor is
also used in the Fabellae of C. Julius Hyginus in his version of the
Acteon story.)

Whether that's an approprate translation is an involved question. I haven't
the time for a full investigation, but here are a few disconnected facts. The
well-known Greek word hylê means `wood,' though it was used in
extended senses, particularly for `matter' in general (see the HYLE entry). There is a dog named
Hyleús in Xenophon's Cynegeticus 7.5. That name is
traditionally translated as `Ringwood.' Well, that's the single translation
offered by the LSJ. I'm not sure how far the
translation is justified. The proper noun Ringwood in English is a place name
that apparently originally
meant `the woods of the Regni,' the last being an ancient tribe. There is no
common noun ringwood (at least not one mentioned by the
OED), but on the pattern of other words, like
ring-tail, one would expect ringwood to be wood with rings.
Hyleús doesn't really have enough morpheme in it after `wood,'
so one could hardly squeeze out a `ring.' Maybe the translation is intended to
suggest that the dog goes around the woods.

So much for the dog name Hyleús, and for one traditional
``Ringwood.'' The name Hylactor (so written in the
Latin of Ovid and Hyginus) evidently recalls the
Greek verb hylaktéô, `I howl' (or bay, bark, or growl, but
it is applied only to dogs, or metaphorically to humans). Funny how Greek and
English have words that seem to connect barking and trees. (The English word,
of course, is bark, but perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree here.) I
would have guessed that as a name, Hylactor would just mean `howler.'
That would also jibe with the mention of his shrill voice. (Similar scattered
comments for some other dogs indicate that the names tend to be appropriate.)
But I'm no expert. Frank Justus Miller, Ph.D., LL.D., Professor in the
University of Chicago, wrote (in a footnote) in his Loeb of the Metamorphoses
(1916) that the English name of Hylactor is `Mountaineer.' My only insight
into this is that mountaineers carry wooden staffs, and that maybe dogs howling
are associated with mountains. Beats me. Ah -- I have a better insight: His
footnote, which gives the ``English names of these hounds in their order,'' has
the order actually scrambled. Another dog's name, also evidently
mistranslated, is given as ``Barker.'' Sheesh!

A real-time entry -- can't beat it. (What, you think after doing all that
research and typing up a bare summary, and finally realizing that it was all
just an ordering confusion in a footnote, I should erase all that and only give
the translation? Go to hell!) So the answer to the ``involved question''
posed above is finally ``no'': Golding's translation of Hylactor as
`Ringwood' was a howler.

For the benefit of Morse
code tappers who are seeking new careers in an ancient language, we present
a conversion chart between Morse Code and metrical feet. Just remember that
dits (dots) are like short syllables in quantitative verse and like unstressed
syllables in accentual verse, and dahs (dashes) aren't.

Letter

Keying Pattern

Metrical Foot Name

Comments

A

.-

iamb

Most common foot in English verse, and German and Russian verse as
well.

B

-...

paeon primus

Paeon with the long syllable in the first position. This and paeon
quartus (V) are the two most common paeons in Greek meter.

C

-.-.

ditrochee or dichoreus

A foot composed of two trochees (N). Not a common foot in any ancient
meter, and it's also the accentual pattern of the word Macarena.

D

-..

dactyl

Common in English verse. D is for dactyl.

E

.

(thesis)

Thesis is not the name of a foot as such, but just designates the
unstressed or short-syllable part of a metrical foot.

F

..-.

paeon tertius

Paeon with the long syllable in the third position.

G

--.

antibacchius

H

....

proceleusmatic foot or tetrabrach

The less common name simply means `four short.' There's something very
fourish about the eighth letter of the English alphabet.

I

..

pyrrhic foot or dibrach

Better than a Pyrrhic victory.

J

.---

first epitrite

Epitrite with the short syllable first.

K

-.-

cretic foot or amphimacer

Complement of an amphibrach.

L

.-..

paeon secundus

Paeon with the long syllable in the second position.

M

--

spondee

Common in English verse.

N

-.

trochee or choreus

Common in English verse. Very common in children's verse in English.

O

---

molossus

P

.--.

antispast

I guess it precedes the maisn curse. Complement of a choriamb (X).

Q

--.-

third epitrite

Epitrite with the short syllable third.

R

.-.

amphibrach

Amphibrach means `both [ends] short.'

S

...

tribrach

The name simply means `three short.'

T

-

(arsis)

Well dah. It's not a usual foot, though you might regard it as a
contracted dibrach (I). Arsis is not the name of a foot as such, but
just designates the stressed or long-syllable part of a metrical foot.

U

..-

anapest

Common in English verse.

V

...-

paeon quartus

Paeon with the long syllable in the last position. This and paeon
primus (B) are the two most common paeons in Greek meter.

W

.--

bacchius

Since it's named after the god of the fermented fruit of the vine, you
might remember di-dah-dah as a grape hanging off a length of vine.

X

-..-

choriamb

Composed of a choreus (N) followed by a iamb (A). Cf. antispast
(P).

Y

-.--

second epitrite

Epitrite with the short syllable second. The Y is sort of a second way
to represent consonantal J, and Morse code for J corresponds to a first
epitrite foot.

Z

--..

greater Ionic

Cf. lesser Ionic (Ü).

À, Å [non-English extension to Morse code]

.--.-

dochmius

One or more of the long syllables (especially the second syllable) may
be resolved (i.e., replaced by two short syllables). Either or
both of the short syllables may be replaced by a long syllable.

Ä, Æ [non-English extension to Morse code]

.-.-

diiamb

Two iambs combined into one foot.

ch [non-English extension to Morse code]

----

dispondee

Two spondees combined into one foot.

Ö, Ø [non-English extension to Morse code];
! in old North American landline telegraphy.

---.

fourth epitrite

Epitrite with the short syllable last.

Ü [non-English extension to Morse code]

..--

lesser Ionic

It's also called the smaller Ionic, but it's the same length as the
greater Ionic (Z). The only difference is that the long syllables come
first in the greater Ionic. It just goes to show that first
impressions matter.

meter

The fundamental SI unit of length, or at
least the unprefixed one. Since this is, or, well, started out to be, a
museum, er, glossary, of acronyms and abbreviations, you should have should
have gone to the m entry first. (You are forgiven.
Now go forth and multiply or something.)

Méthexis

Revista Argentina de Filosofía Antigua/Argentine Journal for
Ancient Philosophy. As I add this entry in January 2002, the Argentine economy is in a free-fall that is scary even
to those of us who remember the 1970's. The ancient philosophy of greatest
immediate utility would appear to be stoicism.

Okay, look: you've caught us at a bad moment (2006, to be precise), when
we're rearranging some of our informational furnishings. Right now, the
information that should be here eventually temporarily has been copied over to
the meter entry, where it is
better-organized and more complete. When we've cleaned up a little around
here, we'll let some of that information sort of slosh back in here, maybe.

Pyrrhic foot: two short syllables or two unstressed syllables.

iambus: a short syllable followed by a long one (in quantitative
verse) or an unaccented syllable followed by an accented.

spondee: two long or stressed syllables.

choreus or trochee: a iambus in reverse -- long or stressed
followed by short or unstressed.

tribrach: three short syllables.

anapest: two short or unstressed syllables followed by one long or
stressed. Anapest means `reversed.' It's a reversed dactyl...

dactyl: one long/stressed syllable
followed by two short/unstressed. The name means `finger,' so this is
a foot that is a finger. You'll observe that each human finger (each
of yours, probably) consists of three bones: a long one (a phalangeal
bone) followed by two short ones. In Spanish, a male (female) typist is
called a dactilógrafo (dactilógrafa).

antibacchius: a three-syllable foot with two long followed by one
short.

bacchius: the reverse or maybe the inverse of an antibacchius --
short-long-long or maybe long-long-short. Welcome to Wissenschaft.

amphibrach: a three-syllable foot with the middle one long or
stressed and the initial and final ones not. The amphibrach has, at
this crude level of description, time-reversal invariance.

cretic foot or amphimacer: like an amphibrach but with syllable
lengths interchanged: a three-syllable foot with the middle one short
or unstressed and the initial and final ones long or stressed.

molossus: three long or stressed syllables.

paeon: a four-syllable foot with one long and three short. Any of
4:8, 4:4, 4:2, and 4:1, in sensible notation: 4:2n.

proceleusmatic foot: four short syllables -- 4:0. Also 4-F for the
SSS: flat feet.

epitrite: three long and one short. 4:(15-2n) -- as if
the order didn't matter.

Ionic: a spondee and a pyrrhic. Spondee first
(long-long-short-short, 4:12) is a greater Ionic. Pyrrhic first (4:3)
is smaller Ionic.

metric foot

Thirty centimetres, or 11.811024 inches. (That's 11 in., 9 ll., and
about 61 mils left over, for those of you keeping track of the score at home.)
A standard length unit for lumber in the UK.

metrification

During the 57th Congress of the United States (1901-1903), the House
Committee on Coinage, Weights and Measures held hearings on the adoption of the
metric system. A pamphlet was published containing the testimony heard by that
committee. In 1904, Frederick A. Halsey published The Metric Fallacy
(New York: D. Van Nostrand Co.), which excerpted some of that testimony. To
those who say that Halsey may have excerpted tendentiously, I say, ``go study
the Congressional Record (or the pamphlet if you can find it) and email me a
detailed summary of your findings.''

Here, from pp. 13-14 of Halsey's book, are some estimates of how long the
transition to metric units might take:

Elihu Thompson (p. 2 -- all page numbers refer to the pamphlet):
``I think the government could begin right off and should give the
manufacturers about two years for preparation in getting their new
gauges and in making plans for new work in the metric system.''

F.O. Blackwell (p. 2): ``say five or six years.''

E.M. Hewlett (p. 3): ``two or three years would be required for
the change provided manufacturers from whom raw materials are obtained
coöperate.''

H.G. Reist (p. 3): ``two to five years['] time should be allowed
for the change.''

Mr. Christy (p. 8): ``perhaps a few years might occur before the
transformation was entirely effected.''

Mr. William Whitman (p. 17): ``I think at least two years' notice
ought to be given ... During those two years there would be ample time
for all the necessary preparation and discussion. ... I do not
apprehend any difficulty in bringing about the change.''

Dr. H.W. Blackwell (p. 52): ``If you can put it in here two or
three years or four or five years ahead, everybody can accommodate
himself to that.''

Mr. Jas. K. Taylor (p. 58): ``I would strongly favor it except that
I should say that there were difficulties ahead for about two years.''

[Gee -- transcribing all this optimism is taking longer than I
expected. I guess I'll finish it later, but it shouldn't be much
later.]

Here's a little reminder of what we've been missing since Dave Barry
retired.

In
lifestyle news [for January 2004], the hot trend is ``metrosexuals'' --
young males who are not gay but are seriously into grooming and dressing well.
There are only eight documented cases of males like this, all living in two
Manhattan blocks, but they are featured in an estimated 17,000 newspaper and
magazine articles over the course of about a
week, after which this trend, like a minor character vaporized by aliens in a
``Star Trek'' episode, disappears and is never heard from again.

Etymologically, metrosexual is akin to Oedipean (vide
metropolis, infra). Incidentally, I
heard of an English girl born in the 70's who was named ``Jocasta''! Her high
school friends called her ``Joker.'' Ha-ha, I'm sure. And I used to wonder
how parents could bring themselves to name their daughters ``Cassandra.'' (I
think now that ``Cassy'' became popular, and that ignorant sorts in the
nineteenth century started supposing it was short for Cassandra. One name it
had been short for was Alexandra.)

metropolis

You know what a metropolis is, so I'm not going to define it. I do want to
point out that the word is etymologically (and in a rarer, older acception)
``mother city.'' It is ultimately derived from the Greek words
mêtêr (`mother') and polis (`city'). (Yes, yes, the
Greeks used e's there. Hence a name taken from the mother is a
metronymic, as one from the father is a patronymic.)

The preceding information is of no use to you. My practical reason for
including this entry is to alert you that the correct (well, etymologically
Greek, anyway) plural form is metropoleis. It sounds a lot better than
``metropolises,'' too.

MEU

Marine Expeditionary Unit.

MeV

Mega-Electron-Volt[s]. A convenient energy unit
for anyone who accelerates ions through potential drops that cumulatively
amount to megavolts. Convenient for nuclear physicists and nuclear chemists,
in other words.

The mass of an electron is 0.511 MeV/c2. The
next-lighter known particle is the muon, with a mass of about 107
MeV/c2. The electron and muon are
leptons (q.v.), the name assigned to
express the fact that they are in fact light. There are also massless
particles -- the photon and the as-yet-unobserved graviton. Then there are the
neutrinos, ghostly uncharged leptons, one per charged lepton. Neutrinos were
originally supposed to be massless, but evidence piling up since the 1980's
indicates that they have mass. That mass is difficult to measure, but is on
the order of a few eV/c2.

If I were speaking instead of writing, I would just have said ``on the order of
a few electron volts.'' Five syllables might mark some kind of transition
point. While ``electron volt'' and ``ee vee'' are at least comparably common
in speech, ``mega-electron volt'' or ``million electron volt'' is rare compared
to ``em ee vee'' among physicists. (I've never heard ``mevv,'' but I suppose
there must be some weirdo out there who says it. For more about this kind of
usage, see the GeV entry.)

MEWA

Multiple-Employer Welfare Arrangement. A kind of health insurance policy
that pools the employees in a number of small businesses so they can obtain
less expensive ``group'' rates. In the US, every MEWA must be licensed by the
insurance department of the local (usually state) jurisdiction in which the
policy is sold.

A common form of health insurance scam is a MEWA that operates as a Ponzi
scheme. (See IRC entry for explanation and some
history.)
Since the pricing of insurance policies is a matter of uncertain calculation,
it is difficult to prove criminal intent when these schemes fail. So long as
the scam artist skims off the top in a formally legitimate manner (e.g.,
by taking a high salary), other criminal sanctions (such as those for
embezzlement or fraudulent accounting) are inapplicable. Sometimes civil
penalties (fines for restitution and possibly further damages) may be assessed
under contract law.

Mexican Hat

A Utah town on the northern end of the Navajo Nation reservation.

A mathematical function. The Mexican hat function is the Laplacian
of a (usually two-dimensional) Gaussian. It's used in edge detection.

Mitteleuropäische Zeit. German: `Central
European Time' (CET).
For much more than you care to know, see the entry for
standard time zone A, which is the same zone.

Me-109, ME-109

MEsserschmitt-109. A WWII-era fighter
plane built for the German Luftwaffe by Messerschmitt, A.G. It was a single-engine, low-wing monoplane with a
crew of one. Maximum speed at altitude: about 350 MPH at its introduction in 1939, raised to about 420
MPH by 1944.

Bonus information:

It was a propeller plane.

There was no space for passengers.

A monoplane is a plane with a single front wing.

FWIW, the family name of the company founder, Messerschmitt, means
`knife smith' in German.

Me-110, ME-110

MEsserschmitt-110. A WWII Luftwaffe
fighter. It was a twin-engine, low-wing monoplane with a crew of two. Maximum
speed at altitude: about 360 MPH in 1940.

Me-163, ME-163

MEsserschmitt-163. A WWII Luftwaffe
interceptor-fighter. It was a mid-wing monoplane with a single liquid-rocket
engine with a one-man crew. Maximum speed at altitude: about 550 MPH in 1945. Sometimes also referred to as the JU-163.

Mean Field. The average field used as an approximation in a
mean field theory. A sort of best-constant
approximation to a quantity that depends in a possibly hopelessly complicated
way on (possibly infinitely) many variables.

MF

Medium Frequency. In radio transmission and other electromagnetic
radiation contexts, this means frequencies between 300 kHz and 3 MHz.

MF

Membrane Filter. Hey -- pay attention! We're talkin' BEER.
Millipore's membrane filters are the technology that made draft-quality
beer-in-a-can a reality in the 1950's! How's that
for a military-technology spin-off?

In the year MFA was founded and became affiliated with FIFA, 1996, Montserrat was the world's fastest-growing
nation in proportional terms, and occasionally even in absolute terms -- 600,000
tons of ash, pumice, and rock on the night of September 17-18 alone.

Microsoft Foundation Class. A class
hierarchy that ``encapsulates the user interface portion of the [MS] Windows
API, and makes it significantly easier to create
Windows applications in an object oriented way. This hierarchy is available
for and compatible with all versions of Windows. [3.1, NT, 95; not my idea of
``versions''] The code you create in MFC is extremely portable.'' But not as
portable as Java AWT code.

Minority, Female, Disabled, Veteran. My guess, anyway. I don't think it
stands for Male, Female, DiVerse. It's very
fashionable now (2004) to include something like ``EEO employer. M/F/D/V'' at
the ends of job announcements. Whatever happened to ``race, creed, or national
origin''? Out of fashion, I guess.

On Friday after election day in 1992, president-elect Bill Clinton named Vernon
E. Jordan, Jr., and Warren Christopher to head his transition team. Their main
business was personnel. ``A diverse government'' was one stated goal of the
process.

Appearing that Sunday November 8 on ABC's ''This week with David Brinkley,''
Jordan was asked whether the country was ready for its first black attorney
general. Jordan, who is black (and a lawyer who was rumored to be in line for
that post), replied levelly, ``I believe that America is ready for an able,
competent attorney general regardless of race, sex, or previous condition of
servitude.'' That was a joke, son.
Jordan's anachronistic formula echoed the
words of section 1 of the fifteenth amendment to the US Constitution:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude.

And that amendment was not ancient history to Jordan. Interviewed by
Ebonymagazine for the January issue, he
recalled ``my friend, Primus King, an itinerant Black preacher, unlettered but
learned, who brought with great courage, conviction, fortitude, and
fearlessness the case, King v. Chapman, that gave Blacks in Georgia the right
to vote in the Democratic primary. While this is an exalted position and a
great honor, every day in this office I remind myself that I stand on Primus
King's shoulders and so do President-elect Bill Clinton and Vice
President-elect Al Gore.''

MFEO

Meant For Each Other.

mfG

meine freundlich[st]e Grüsse. German, `my
[most] friendly greetings.' Typical sign-off at end of a letter. When
it is a sentence or the beginning of a sentence, the em is capitalized: MfG.

M.F.H., MFH

Master of the Fox Hounds. An honored occupation in Victorian English life.
Also called ``Master of the Hounds'' or just ``Master.''

Magnetic Force Microscop{e|y}. Similar to an
AFM, but with a ferromagnetic tip, and the force not due to current
tunneling but to magnetic forces. Useful for mapping magnetic fields.
Cf. other types of scanning-probe microscopy
(SPM).

Most Favored Nation. Normal import-tariff status of US trading partners.
Anything less than MFN really amounts to a US protest against the
international trade behavior of a country.

Psst! Listen, but keep this under your hat: a bill to change the
name from `most favored nation' (a terminological oddity from the eighteenth
century) to `normal trade relations' is making its way quietly through Congress.
It passed the Senate by unanimous consent on Sept. 11, 1996. The House will be
a bigger hurdle, but the odds for the bill look good nevertheless.

MFO

Market-Facing Organization. I don't know what -- if anything -- this
means, but Scott Adams, in a promo for his
book, The
Dilbert Principle,
specifically identifies this as having appeared in an ``actual company memo.''

MFO

Multinational Force and Observers. Usually more observers than force.

mfp

Mean Free Path. The mean distance traversed between collisions. Note that one also
distinguishes elastic mfp and inelastic mfp. Cf.mft.

MFP

MonoFluoroPhosphate.

MFR

Multilink Frame Relay.

MFS

Magnetic-Field Sensor.

MFT

Marriage and Family Therapy. Sounds like just the cure for anyone
afflicted with an excess of disposable income, but the term is used (perhaps I
should say also used) for counseling of family groups as opposed to
individuals.

Can we say ``co - de - pen - dent''? Sssuuuuurrre we can!

MFT

Massachusetts Federation of Teachers. Teachers' union affiliated with the
AFT. The state also has a competing NEA affiliate, MTA.

MFT

Mean Field Theory. An approximation for systems described
by fields. Basically, the approach is to treat
the field as if it had the same value everywhere, a
mean field value, so that in effect the field is reduced to a simple
variable. MFT attempts to find the best value of that mean field. This is a
pretty radical simplification, but it is often effective. In a nonlinear
system, even the mean-field version of a problem can be pretty difficult to
solve. A standard application is in Landau-Ginzburg models of statistical
systems, and often the terms L-G and MFT are used interchangeably.

At the board, on writing paper, or wherever one is not restricted by
predetermined character sets, it is not uncommon to write MFT with a theta
instead of a tee.

mft

Mean Free Time. Like mfp, also available in
elastic and inelastic flavors.

MFT

Montana Federation of Teachers. A state teachers' union affiliated with
the AFT, which merged in 2000 with the NEA-affiliated MEA
to form the MEA-MFT.

Male/Female/Veteran/Disabled. That's the etymology. Naturally, the
correct expansion of d is ``challenged.'' Soon m will be
expanded ``alternatively-gendered.'' As brilliant new research is conclusively
and scientifically proving, however, male and female are socially
constructed frauds. The terms have no objective meaning except when they are
used to demonstrate that males oppress females. In reality, there is a rich
multidimensional continuum of sexual identities. Lemme outta here.

.mg

(Domain name code for) Madagascar.

Mg

Chemical symbol for MaGnesium. Atomic number 12. The second-lightest
alkaline earth, or the lightest alkaline earth, or the heaviest element in its
periodic-table group not to be an alkaline earth. (Seek clarification at the
alkaline earth entry.) Not to be
confused with Manganese (Mn), fool!

Magnesium burns hot and bright when ignited in an ordinary atmosphere. This
added to the excitement of car races when magnesium wheels were first
introduced for their light weight. This is one reason why alloy wheels were
subsequently introduced.

MG

Major General. A rank.

MG

Metallurgical Grade. [A starting point in the process of purifying
silicon (MGS, q.v.).]

mg

MilliGram. Should be uncapitalized (``milligram'') when written out. One
one-thousandth of a gram (g).

MG, M.G.

A small car made by British Leyland. Earlier an independent make of car.
Now, M.G. has an expansion, but it is extremely subtle, so pay attention: The
M in M.G. refers to Morris, as in William (``Billy'') Morris. He owned Morris
Garages, where M.G.'s were made, and the G in M.G. indeed refers to Garages.
Moreover, the Garages that the G honors are none other than the Morris Garages
owned by Billy Morris. However, M.G. does not stand for ``Morris
Garages.'' Instead, it is simply a two-letter name that honors both Morris and
his garages. You will have noticed that, in addition to the two letters, the
name is written with two dots, or periods, which normally suggest abbreviation.
Make no mistake: in this case they do not indicate abbreviation. They are
there simply for decorative purposes. They do not occur in the car names MGA
and MGB.

Know what? As long as I'm here, why don't I talk about MG cars? Sure!

The place to begin is with Morris cars. William Morris, who operated a cycle
shop in Oxford from the 1890's, briefly entered the motorcycle business, and
then went into the car business in 1910.
This web page
claims that the Morris Oxford was introduced in 1913, and the Morris Cowley
in 1915, and that ``[e]fficient production methods allowed large numbers of
these cars to built before the Great War started.''
That must have been efficient indeed, since the Great War started in August
1914 (Britain was in it from the first month). Anyway, after the usual
conversion to and from war production, Morris Motors Ltd. continued
manufacturing improved versions of the Oxford and the Cowley. I'm not going to
sort out the early history because Morris is not an acronym.

Now, TTBOMKAU, by 1922 Morris had moved his
manufacturing activities (Morris Motors, Ltd.) to Cowley (the town, not the
car). He continued to maintain a retail and service operation in Oxford
(originally the Morris
garage; ``Morris Garages'' after other Oxford properties had been acquired in
1913). In 1921, Cecil Kimber (1888-1945) became sales manager at Morris
Garages, Ltd., and in 1922 succeeded to general manager. In 1923 he began
selling a sporty modified version of the Morris Cowley ``Bullnose'' in 1923.
This model, known as the Morris Garages Chummy, had an alternate body built
onto an unmodified Cowley chassis. In the next few years, Morris Garages
Specials were sold that departed increasingly from the Cowleys they were based
on, with modified (lowered) chassis and outsourced bodies (originally from a
shop called Carbodies) and engines. The first pure MG design came out in 1928.
In 1929, the special-car business had outgrown the Morris Garages at Oxford and
was moved to Abingdon, where Cecil Kimber founded the M.G. Car Company Ltd.
The rest is history. So's the part that went before, but they say this anyway.
You can read an
overview history or a less picture-intensive but slightly saltier
history, or you can go off and do your own web search -- I'm not stopping
you. On page two of this
newsletter, you can see that Cecil Kimber was insistent on the point made
above, that ``M.G. does not stand for Morris Garages.'' He also looked askance
at the writing of the company name using ``MG'' (i.e., without the
dots). Hey! Old man! Did you notice that your famous octagonal logo, which
made its first appearance in 1924, never had the dots? Gimme a break, really.

While we're on name coincidences involving modeling agencies and automobile
manufacturers, I must mention the Ford Modeling Agency, cofounded in 1946 by
the famous Eileen Ford and her husband Jerry. These Fords are apparently no
particular relation of the Henry Ford who founded the Ford Motor Company.
Comparisons are probably inevitable. Here are some from a
New York Times article on the occasion of the
modeling agency's twentieth anniversary,

[The Ford Model Agency] is to fashion and advertising what the other Ford
organization is to the automtive industry -- one of the biggest and most
successful. ... Among Stewart, Plaza Five, Gillis McGill and Ford -- the top
four agencies in the country -- most fashion editors and advertising casting
directors place Ford first.
Ask the Fords how they got there and they say that they, like the auto
company's founder, had a better idea.
Jerry (for Gerod) Ford, president of the agency, which handles both
male and female models, said: ``In the old days half the models did their own
billing -- when they remembered their appointments and to ask to be paid. But
even then they often didn't get their money, which meant the agency didn't get
its fees.
``It was a way of doing business that was partly responsible for the
demise of John Robert Powers, Bob Taft and Harry Conover, agencies that once
led the field. Eileen modeled for Conover before we were married.''
To avoid confusion, Mr. Ford helped develop a system (since adopted by
other agencies) for recording telephone orders and cancellations for models, a
voucher system by which the agency pays the models in advance and then collects
from the clients and a sophisticated cross index of their models with their
available times so that this information can be supplied to clients in seconds.

They got 10% of each model's earnings, and collected an additional 10% from
each client. At the time of the article (Dec. 21, 1966, p. 57; byline
Bernadette Carey), the Ford Agency was just starting to move from index cards
to a computer database.

Another Ford who is no particular relation of the famous Henry is former US
president Gerald R. Ford, who represented a
Michigan congressional district that was nearDetroit, in some sense
of the word near. Gerald Ford's wife Betty (maiden name Elizabeth Bloomer)
had been a model in New York, but before the Ford Agency existed. (Gerald
Ford, a football player at U of M and a football
coach on the side when he attended Yale Law, also did some modeling work.)

If it had anything to do with Morris Garages, I'd be sure to mention that the
model Christie Brinkley is not known to be related to the late TV news anchor
Huntley Brinkley, er, I mean
David Brinkley. Christie was a supermodel, one of the dozens of models who is
incorrectly claimed to have been the first to be called a supermodel.
In August 2000, she was a superdelegate from New York at the Democratic Party
convention in LA. Super!

MG

Motor-Generator. An MG set is a paired motor and generator. The two main
applications are in electric power generation and conversion. The power
generation application is obvious. It's probably more common to encounter the
term in off-grid situations, describing power generation for on-site or
in-vehicle (sub, ship, plane) consumption, but the term is also used in cental
power plants. Until fuel-cell technology is much improved, MG sets will be the
only practical way to convert, say, diesel fuel into amperage. The power
conversion application is mostly for use when the available and required power
frequencies are not the same (values of frequency here understood to often
include zero -- DC power). In these cases the motor
is electric. In many cases it's more efficient to use an AC-driven MG with DC output rather than a rectifier.

In typical configurations, the motor and generator of an MG set run
synchronously and are directly coupled -- via belt, gears, or a common shaft.
The exception I know of is the MG sets used for tokomaks. Tokomaks require a
lot of power to build the magnetic confinement fields, but this power is needed
only for periods of a few seconds. The power is provided by a bank of MG sets
with flywheels. The motors rev up the flywheels over a period of minutes, and
then the flywheels turn the generators, slowing down in a few seconds. I
remember reading about a bus system in Scandinavia someplace years ago, that
used flywheels to store power either from braking or from continuously running
motors.

MG

Multi-Grid. Describes discrete-grid-based simulation codes in which grid
spacing is not uniform or multiple (possibly hierarchically related) grids are
used. (Of course, it is common in finite-difference integration of partial
differential equations to have different orders of derivative defined at
alternating nodes of the same grid. This is not called multi-grid
simulation.)

A model introduced by MG in September 1955,
supposedly based on an experimental LeMans car used earlier that year (based on
the Austin
B-Series engine). The MGA is remembered today primarily as the precursor of
the MGB.

MGB

Probably the most popular car model ever sold by MG. Introduced in 1962 as the successor of the MGA.

The MGB was one of those cars that inspired affectionate loyalty in its owners.
One of the Stammtisch Beau Fleuve members (alpha chapter) had an MGA and has
more interesting memories. I'll have to interview her for the glossary.

MGC

Mutual Group Centre. The nice thing about this name is that it consists of
common nouns which suggest almost nothing about the thing named. (For a time,
it belonged to the Mutual Life Assurance Company of Canada.) The complex
(office towers and a ground-level shopping concourse) was originally known as
the Shipp Centre, and is now (2003) known as the Clarica Centre. The
popularity that the MGC name achieved in its time may be seen from the fact
that addresses are often given in something like the following form ``3300
Bloor Street West (at Islington), Clarica Centre (formerly the Shipp Center),
Toronto, Ontario.'' In point of fact, it has probably never been known as the
MGC, elsewhere than in this glossary. Indeed, there appear to be no glossaries
that expand this particular MGC. Therefore, we have inserted this entry to
fill the unmet need.

`National Council of Security' of Turkey. An unelected monitoring body
created in the 1982 constitution (still in effect as of 2007) following the
1980 coup. It has supremacy over the parliament and the government, and has
almost exclusive control over the armed forces and the internal security
apparatus.

MGM

Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
Marcus Loew (1870-1927), a cinema owner, bought Metro Pictures in 1920, and a
controlling interest in Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures in 1924.
Loew made Mayer vice president and general manager of MGM.

Frances Gumm was born in Grand Rapids, Minn., on June 10, 1922. (I don't know
if people in Minnesota commonly abbreviate their Grand Rapids by GR, but we've
got a GR entry waiting for them if they do.)
Judy Garland stopped singing permanently in 1969. Before that, she said

I was born at the age of twelve on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.

Goldwyn Pictures was a partnership formed in 1916 by the two brothers-in-law
Samuel Goldfish and Edgar Selwyn. Goldfish had been born Shmuel Gelbfisz in
1884, which is the Polish spelling of the Yiddish name translated to Samuel
Goldfish when he came to America. In requesting a name change in 1918, he told
the judge that everybody assumed his name was Goldwyn.
In 1923 he began his own company, called Samuel Goldwyn Productions.

Mars Global Surveyor. A
spacecraft launched by NASA on November 7, 1996, with
a target lifetime of about three years. It had a very successful run,
operating longer at Mars than any other spacecraft in history.

In November 2006, it was inadvertently killed.
According to an
internal review board summary, on ``Nov. 2,
after the spacecraft was ordered to perform a routine adjustment of its solar
panels, the spacecraft reported a series of alarms, but indicated that it had
stabilized. That was its final transmission. Subsequently, the spacecraft
reoriented to an angle that exposed one of two batteries carried on the
spacecraft to direct sunlight. This caused the battery to overheat and
ultimately led to the depletion of both batteries. Incorrect antenna pointing
prevented the orbiter from telling controllers its status, and its programmed
safety response did not include making sure the spacecraft orientation was
thermally safe.'' Apparently the incorrect antenna pointing was ultimately due
to ``a computer error [sic] made five months before the likely battery
failure.''

MGS

Metallurgical-Grade Silicon. Refined by reduction from quartzite ore
or good clean sand.
(The quartzite is the oxidant in the high-temperature burning of some
carbon fuel.) About 98% pure, it's the start of the refinement process
that leads to EGS.

Mahatma Gandhi University. A/k/a
``M G University.'' This seems to be the only one. There isn't even one in
the state of Gujarat (his place of birth, retrospectively). By contrast, there
are at least three universities currently named for Rajiv Gandhi.

Mahatma Gandhi University was first established as Gandhiji University.
``Gandhiji'' is a polite or respectful inflection of the name ``Gandhi,''
whereas ``Mahatma'' means `great soul.' (This was used, by others, in place of
his actual given name, which was Mohandas.) The majority view seems to be that
``Mahatma Gandhiji'' is slightly over the top. (Speakers of European languages
ought to recognize the roots of ``Mahatma,'' which are cognate with the
English words like major, mayor and atmosphere (or German
atmen, to breathe.')

The university was officially established by Act 12 of 1985 of the Kerala State
Legislature, and approved by the governor on April 17, 1985. However, that
1985 act includes (ch. I, sec. 1, subsection (2)) the statement that ``[the
act] shall be deemed to have come into force on the 2nd day of October, 1983.''
I don't know when the university actually came into operation; many online
resources state baldly that the university was ``established on 2 October
1983.''

The university name was changed by the legislature's Act II (it does not appear
to be Act 11) of 1988, which had the so-called short title of ``The Gandhiji
University (Amendment and Special Provisions) Act, 1988.'' That
act doesn't say precisely that the University's name is changed. Rather, it
makes a number of amendments to the 1985 act (the one that was deemed to have
established a university in 1983). Most of these amendments consist of
changing ``Gandhiji University'' to ``Mahatma Gandhi University'' separately in
various sections and subsections of the original act. Most of the 1988 act
``shall be deemed to have come into force on the 28th of January, 1988.''

The structure of the 1988 act is puzzling without being confusing.
Sections 3, 4, and 5
amend three specific parts of the 1985 act. The amendment in each case is the
substitution of the words ``Mahatma Gandhi University'' for the original words
``Gandhiji University.'' Section 6 provides for the same substitution
throughout the 1985 act, with the explicit exception of the three places where
the substitution is made by the aforementioned sections 3, 4, and 5 of the 1988
act. The specific places mentioned are
subsection (1) of section 1 of the 1985 act,
clause (31) of section 2 of the 1985 act,
and subsection (1) of section 3 of the 1985 act. These are amended in sections
3-5, respectively, of the 1988 act. (These subsections and clause are the only
places where ``Gandhiji University'' occurred in the first three sections of
the 1985 act, so the stipulation of subsection and clause numbers is nugatory.)

Sections 3-6 together seem to have the same effect that section 6 alone would
have had if the explicit exceptions had been removed. I can think of three
possible explanations for the separate treatments: (a) The version of the 1988
law that I am reading originally treated the three named sections of the
1985 act differently, but the 1988 act has itself been modified by some later
act, making the original distinction invisible. (b) There is some magical
distinction between making an ``amendment'' in which ``the expression'' (or
``the words'') <foo>
is substituted for <bar>,
on the one hand (secs. 3-5), and simply making a ``substitution'' of
``the expression'' <foo>
for ``the expression'' <bar>,
on the other hand (section 6). (c) Kerala legislators are paid by the word.

If computer programmers wrote this way, you'd see C code like

if ( (x == 3) || (x == 4) || (x == 5) )
{
x = 0;
}
else
{
x = 0;
}

This is bloated. Better:

if (x != 0)
{
x = 0;
}
/* And most compactly... */
x=x==0?x:0;

Incidentally, section 2 of the 1988 act amends the long title of the 1985 act.
Go check out the pdf
yourself. The 1988 act begins at page 75.

MGUS

Monoclonal Gammopathy of Undetermined Significance.

MGY

Million Gallons per Year. Of water, probably. See the gallons-per-day
entry gpd.

MH

Malignant Hyperthermia.

.mh

(Domain name code for) Marshall Islands.

MH

Message Handling.

M-H, MH

Metal-Halide (lamp).

MHA

Mueller-Hinton Agar.

MHB

Mueller-Hinton Broth.

MHC

Major Histocompatibility Complex. A segment of DNA that codes for a part of the immune system that
distinguishes self and non-self.

MHC

Mount Holyoke College. Founded as
the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary by Mary Lyon in 1837, it was the first
post-secondary school in the US exclusively for women. (Oberlin, founded in
1833, was co-ed from the start, and the first women matriculated for the
baccalaureate degree course in 1837.)

MHC's brief history
summary includes this: ``Mount Holyoke's early history is one of struggle
and triumph over tremendous odds. The country was in the grip of economic
depression when Lyon set about gathering the means with which to establish her
institution.'' This is mild understatement. The years-long depression that
began with the [bank] Panic of 1837 was the worst economic contraction in US
history, exceeding even the Great Depression in misery if not duration. It was
the last period in US history when large numbers of city-dwellers
died of starvation and exposure.

Ohmspelled backwards. An obsolete and
egregious unit of conductance equal to one siemens or one inverse ohm. Still
occurs in bawdy EE drinking songs like the one about
cap and coil out by Wheatstone's Bridge. (Coil cries out. She wants ``Mho! Mho!'')

Speaking of coils, it seems the electrical engineers are a very
twistedbunch,
at least linguistically speaking. (I like to say ``linguistically speaking''
and ``literally spelled'' and stuff like that.)
They also came up with ``imref.''

Military History Quarterly. That's what MHQ stands for, but the periodical that uses MHQ as
its short title is styled in full MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military
History.

MHR

Massachusetts
Historical Review. An annual publication of the Massachusetts
Historical Society. You know, the Red Sox didn't let just the Bambino slip
through their fingers to New York. In April 1945, they passed up Jackie
Robinson, just as the Brooklyn Dodgers were preparing to sign him to their farm
system. (See the article in
MHR vol.
6. In 1959, the Red Sox became the last MLB team to integrate.)

MHR

Material History Review / Revue d'histoire de la culture
matérielle. [The corresponding French
acronym, RHCM, is less used even in the French text (la Revue is
preferred).]

MHR

Maximum Heart Rate. The red line on your heart tachometer. You needn't
worry that you'll exceed it by pushing too hard. It is the maximum possible
rate, determined by how long it takes your heart to do what it needs to do
to pump. In the course of a single cycle, for every part of the heart
muscle, it is the time needed to tighten and to relax. As we age, the time
to tighten stays about constant, but the time to relax, like an old sponge
trying to expand back into shape, gets longer. To a decent approximation
for a majority of people, MHR in beats per minute is 220 minus age in years.

MHS

Message Handling { System | Service }. The system is defined by
X.400.

MHV

Miniature High Voltage. A kind of coax
connector, must withstand pulses with peak voltages of 5000V. About the size
of BNC's; they're even called ``high-voltage BNC'' from the resemblance, but
they don't mate (this is definitely not a design flaw).

MHV's have ``exposed'' center pins, so if you're going to be mucking around
nearby, you might just prefer Safe High Voltage (SHV) coax connectors. Both MHV and SHV are intended to
operate up to 50 MHz, but they have
non-constant impedance structure.

The expansion of coax connectors' acronyms is notoriously uncertain. MHV is
sometimes expanded ``Maximum'' or ``Modular'' High Voltage.

MIle. From Latinmille passuum, `one
thousand paces' or five thousand (Roman) feet. The Roman foot was only
29.6 cm long, so the Roman mile was 1.480 km. (Cf.M, m.)

The English foot is 30.48 cm long (see barleycorn), and an English mile has 5280 of them,
making an 1 mile equal to 1.609344 km. It takes seven digits in kilometers to
get the same accuracy that you get with just one digit in miles! It just
proves yet again how inconvenient and unwieldy all those mutually incompatible
metric systems are.

MI

Military Intelligence, British abbreviation. Ian Fleming's James
Bond works for MI-5. As early as a speech in 1920, O. G. Villard said

According to the LatinCEO issue mentioned at the FTAA entry, 76% of (of the dollar value of) US
airborne exports to Latin America and the Caribbean and 79% of US airborne
imports therefrom, pass through MIA. The information source is MIA itself.
Brazil has by far the largest share and MIA handles ``just under 60% of all
[US] air cargo trade with Brazil and Argentina.'' Total trade (exports plus
imports) with Brazil through MIA totaled $6 million in FY 2001. Colombia was second with $2 million. Gee,
that's not a whole lot. Oh! They mean legal trade.

Joking aside, the dollar amounts appear to be off by a factor of a thousand.

MIA

Missing In Action.

MIA

Montgomery Improvement Association. An association founded for the moral
improvement of Montgomery, Alabama. On December
5, 1955, Rosa Parks was convicted of failing to give up her seat on a bus, as
required by a Jim Crow law then in effect. That evening several thousand
protesters crowded into (into?) the Holt Street Baptist Church for the
foundation of the MIA. The new pastor at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Rev.
Martin Luther King, Jr., became the president of the MIA. A daylong bus
boycott held that day (see WPC) was extended,
ultimately continuing for 381 days. Read more about it in the Encarta Africana
article about Rosa Parks.

Mishap Investigation Board. A NASA group formed
in the aftermath of a mission failure, to develop, you know, ``lessons
learned.''

MIBK

Methyl IsoButyl Ketone, traditional name for 3,3-dimethyl-2-butanone.
A common solvent, and in particular a usual component of
PMMA resist developers. If you want to know what
it smells like, take a whiff of your dry-erase marker (for overhead-projector
film).

\ /
\/
/\
/ \==O
/
/

MIC

Message Integrity Check. Content-MD5, described in RFC-1864,
is an optional header field for MIME; a 128-bit
``digest'' of arbitrary-length data that serves as
an MIC.

Mic.

MICah. A prophet. A consensus (Catholic and Orthodox, Jewish and
Protestant) book of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Considering the needs of
astronomy and machine shops, and the small degree of abbreviation
achieved by this one in a generally verbose field, it is one of the most
dispensible of abbreviations.

MICrometer. Shop talk. Pronounced ``mike''; never written ``mike,'' in
my experience. The AHD only
lists ``mic''
as a variant spelling of mike, but I hope that
usage stays rare. The OED2 is also unaware of any
other meaning, and the supplement missed this when it passed through that part
of the alphabet in 2001. Come on guys, get a clue! This was already common in
the 1970's, FCOL.

MIC

Military-Industrial Complex.

MIC

Motorcycle Industry Council. It's ``a
not-for-profit, national trade association representing manufacturers and
distributors of motorcycles, scooters, motorcycle/ATV parts and accessories and members of allied
trades, located in Irvine, California.''

MId-America Chapter of the
ATA. ``Serving Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa,
Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, MICATA is a group of professional
translators and interpreters residing in or involved with the Mid-America
region.'' (For Illinois, however, see also MATI.)

The feast (and day of the MASs) of Saint MICHAEL. September 29.
The precise time of day at which Michaelmas begins depends on the local time.
When will they celebrate Michaelmas on Mars?

Michael Steele

A bass player with The Runaways and The Bangles. The Runaways first
performed as a trio (Steele, drummer Sandy West, and rhythm guitarist Joan
Jett) in 1975, but Steele left after a few months, before their first record
contract.

The Bangles were originally (1980) a trio: sisters Vicky and Debby Peterson,
and Suzanna Hoffs. Michael Steele joined them in 1982. They were the hottest
all-girl group of the 1980's. They had some success in the music business too.

[The Runaways lasted less than five years and had more than five bass
guitarists. Peggy Foster was bassist for a couple of weeks (according to this) or a month
(per The Runaways Wikipedia
page, browsed Nov. 2010) after Micki left. She was replaced by Jackie Fox
(``this'' link of previous sentence is an interview with her, with details of
her departure). Joan Jett filled in when Fox left the band in the lurch during
a Japan tour (there was already a lead guitarist by that time -- Lita Ford).
Victory Tischler-Blue (Vicki Blue) joined as bassist after the group returned
from Japan; she got sick and left the group in 1978. Laurie McAllister
replaced Vicki.]

There's another person, a Michael Stephen Steele, who was the first
African-American chairman of the Republican National Committee (during the
2008-2010 election cycle).

Michiana

Michiana is the unofficial name of a region that includes the area around
South Bend, Indiana, and some parts of lower
Michigan. A typical description is ``north-central Indiana and southwestern
Michigan.'' See, for example, the
Michiana Roads page. I
would say that Niles (in Michigan, due north of
South Bend, Indiana) and Elkhart (to the east in Indiana) are within Michiana,
while Gary, Kokomo, and Fort Wayne (in Indiana west, south, and east of South
Bend) and Kalamazoo (in Michigan) are all clearly outside the region. Some
people in South Bend may think that Benton Harbor (to the northwest, in and on
Michigan) is in Michiana, but probably not too many in Benton Harbor think
that.

An incomplete basement of some sort. Here are the three sorts of
``incomplete'' that seem to qualify:

A basement with a dirt floor. These may extend from exterior wall
to exterior wall, and sometimes a laundry room is located there. Don't
drop the laundry.

A basement that is not full height. Four feet (i.e., a
height of 48 inches) was typical, when these things used to be built.
They usually had dirt floors too. Sometimes a full-height basement has
been dug within the original basement, with walls set in from the
original (so it's not ``full width''), and the basement continues to be
called a ``Michigan basement.''

A basement that is much smaller than the ground floor -- say 50
square feet in a typical SFH -- large enough
for a water heater and furnace, and little else. I've been in a house
that was built mostly on a slab and which apparently had a tiny
basement built under a space between the original construction and an
extension, and that was not called a Michigan basement.

There's clearly some overlap between the first two definitions, which seem to
be the two in most common use. On the other hand, I heard the last definition
from a realtor. Most houses that are described as having a Michigan basement
seem to have been built in the nineteenth century. (The late nineteenth
century, but then fewer of the earlier houses still survive.) I guess that the
notion of a Michigan basement as one that is inferior (in any but the most
literal sense) has been extended recently to describe something else... which I
haven't encountered yet.

The realtor who introduced me to this term works in South Bend, Indiana, which
is only a few miles from the Michigan border. I thought the term might be
invidious or at least colloquial, but it's not. And some people in Michigan
wonder what such basements are called in other states. I haven't learned
precisely how the name of Michigan got attached to something that was once
rather common elsewhere. Use of the term is geographically widespread (in the
US), but has become rare only because what it describes has become rare.

MICR

Magnetic-Ink Character Recognition. (Occasionally also ``... Reader.'')
Pronounced ``micker.'' You know those funny-looking numbers and (four other)
characters on bank checks? The characters look funny so they will be
detectably different. They are printed with ``magnetic ink'' so their shapes
can be detected magnetically. ``Magnetic ink'' means ferromagnetic ink; the
pattern is generally not magnetized (or ``poled''). With the right ink
cartridge and font, you can print MICRable text on your laser printer. Visit
this site to
learn about the history and this
page for current standards.

microcredit

I thought this was funny -- credit in amounts on the order of one millionth
of a standard unit. Then I thought, if a standard unit is a country or region
with on the order of a million inhabitants...

The MICROlensing Follow Up Network. Microlensing events occur as the
result of coincidence: one object (typically a star) passing in front of a more
distant bright object (a star, if the event is to be of much use) and deviating
the path of light from the more distant object. The light from that more
distant object is bent by an angle that is inversely proportional to its
distance of closest approach to the nearer object. Proper motion of the nearer
object typically limits the period over which microlensing events can be
observed to a few weeks.

Hence, when a microlensing event is observed, it is
very useful to have data from many observatories, since one can't simply get
more data by longer or later observation from a single observatory (even
assuming the weather collaborates). MicroFUN, which is led by Andrew
Gould, a professor of astronomy at Ohio State University, is a mechanism to
activate the follow-up after a microlensing event is first detected, and to
pool the resulting data. Other microlensing networks are
MOA,
PLANET and
RoboNet, all of which have collaborated at some
level. (At the very least, they exchange ideas on algorithms and strategies to
find promising microlensing events. They also share news of such events, and
pool data for analysis.)

As the PLANET acronym suggests, a major goal of microlensing observations is to
discover planets. Planets orbiting the nearer star show up as interference in
the bent light. As of February 2008, six planets had been discovered by this
method (and announced). The latest two, announced on the 15th inst., were a
pair of gas giants (like Saturn and Jupiter) orbiting a single star.

micromin

A set of microminiature electronic device package standards. VideMMD and MMT.

microscope

In act two of his ``Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'' (1962), Edward Albee
writes

Martha: Oh, little boy, you got yourself hunched over
that microphone of yours. ...
Nick: Microscope. ...
Martha: ... yes ... and
you don't see anything, do you? You see everything
but the goddamn mind; you see all the little specks
and crap, but you don't see what goes on, do you?

[Ellipses in script. In the movie, Elizabeth Taylor plays the braying
alcoholic (not a big creative stretch, eventually) Martha, and George Segal the
callow biologist Nick. Martha's husband George was played by Liz Taylor's
real-life husband at the time (as well as a second time, later) Richard Burton.]

In case you came to this entry just for information on microscopy per
se, and assuming that you've read down to this point, one place you
might visit is Microscopes and Microscopy. There's the
main site `in Europe', or
at least in nearby Britain. There's an
American mirror
hosted by U. of Oklahoma.

In Albee's play, Martha and George are a childless couple, and a fantasy child
is part of their mind games. In reality, Virginia Woolf wanted children and
her husband Leonard did not. They didn't have children. See the VW entry. Or don't.

A program that is based on the principle that it should take dozens of
key-clicks and mouse-button clicks to remove text that you didn't type in the
first place. Microsoft knows best; you didn't want to type what you wanted
to type.

MIchigan Digital Automatic Computer. (The acronym-expansion word order may
not have been strictly obeyed. In one old article that I've seen, it was
introduced thus: ``The angular distribution coefficients were computed on the
MIchigan Automatic Digital Computer (MIDAC), using Equations (12) through (15)
and ....'')

MIDAC was a general-purpose computer completed in 1953. It had about 1000
tubes and 20,000 crystal rectifiers (i.e.,
semiconductor diodes) and 120 relays. Sounds like a vacuum-tube version of
DTL.

Extensive technical details are served by the
Computer History Museum at the
MIDAC entry
(original document page 111) in an etext of ``A Survey of Domestic Electronic
Digital Computing Systems'' prepared by Martin H. Weik for the US Army in 1955;
etext OCRed and marked up
by Ed Thelen).

The Giant Computers file contains
summary information from a Navy report of 1953, some of it possibly
inconsistent with the Army report. In particular, the Army report says the
machine used only 900 tubes of 10 different types. (Two types used in the
central computer, others in the magnetic drum [data storage] system, tape
units, and input-output stations.) The Navy report mentions 1100 tubes.
Possibly there was some redesign. The Navy report gives a total footprint of
845 sq. ft. The Army report gives 65 sq. ft.
for the computer and 12 sq. ft. for the air conditioning unit, but notes that
there were 8 separate cabinets excluding the power and air conditioning units.
They probably needed a lot of access space for the engineer and two technicians
staffing the facility each eight-hour shift.

I never claimed to be middle class in my intellect and in truth, I probably
have the experience of all apostles, I am rejected by the class whose cause I
preach but that has nothing to do with the case. I simply contend that the
middle class ideal which demands that people be affectionate, respectable,
honest and content, that they avoid excitements and cultivate serenity is the
ideal that appeals to me, it is in short the ideal of affectionate family life,
of honorable business methods.

middle-level management

Hire the best people for the job, then tie their hands and watch them fail.
Fire and repeat. Eventually sell division at a loss in order to ``focus on
core businesses.''

Middle Liddell

An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon.
An abridgement of the Oxford Greek Lexicon, which was universally known
by the names of its creators, Liddell and Scott. See LSJ entry for more detail and links.

Middletown, USA

Muncie, Indiana. Pseudonym used by researchers
(the Lynds) in a famous study. The town was chosen to be typical and therefore
representative. Many years later, a new group went back and restudied. I've
read the claim that they decided that the town had evolved in a non-average
way, and concluded that the main reason for the town's different progress was
the presence of a college. I'm not sure that's an accurate synopsis, but
certainly the growth of the college has been important, and it is now the
largest single employer in the area. The college was Ball State, then a
teachers' college and now a university (BSU) with a
major emphasis on teacher education.

Non-Big Six conferences of
NCAA Division-I basketball. They're ``majors''
because they're part of Division I, and the teams are eligible to be invited to
the NCAA tournament (``March Madness''); they're only mid-majors because
they're not one of the Big Six. ``Mid-majors'' is also used to refer to the
teams that belong to the mid-majors conferences.

Mid-majors don't get a lot of invitations to NCAA tournament. In 2006, it was
a big deal when the Missouri Valley Conference got four bids and the Colonial
Athletic Association got its first at-large bid in 20 years.

Mikoyan-Gurevich. There don't seem to have been any even-numbered
MiG's. MiG is pronounced to rhyme with ``pig.''

MIG, Mig, Mig

Metal Inert-Gas (welding). Another name for GMAW, q.v. MIG is pronounced to rhyme with
``MiG.''

miga

Spanish: `crumb.' On the other hand,
hormiga is `ant.' (Also, hormiguero
is `ant colony' and hormigón is `concrete.' The aitch is always
silent. It's just written to remind you that there was an eff in the
Latin. Amazing the trouble people go to.)

I'm struggling to find the relevance, but until then you might as well know
that ort is English for `crumb,' while Ort (q.v.) is German for `place.' `Oort' is International for a quite far-away
place. Platz is also German for `place,' but plotz is Yiddish
for `explode' and some related things. Interestingly, in Spanish
explotar is both `explode' and `exploit.' You can imagine the
greater persuasiveness of union-organizing speeches. There's no connection, I
suppose, but also in Spanish, bomba is both `bomb' and `pump.' I guess
what I'm trying to say here is: if you're ever in an airport in Latin America,
and you get into a heated discussion about unionizing fire companies, switch to
English. The advice might be different in Brazil, however, as the Portuguese
language has (too) many more sounds and allows more distinctions among words.
As a matter of fact, during WWII, in a bar in Rio
(or some other Brazilian city that's harder to spell), my father met someone
who spoke English. So they used that language, and someone came up and asked
what that language was they were speaking, and the other guy made a little
joke. He said `German.' Ha-ha. Police. Arrest. The first thing to know
about joke delivery is when not to. As they say, timing is everything. As a
general rule, wartime is bad timing.

As it turned out (I asked my father) it was Rio, and the guy's name was
Wilson. My father never saw this guy again, which seems to me just as well.

It's probably fair to point out that the semantic subrange of explotar
corresponding to `exploit' is narrower than that of the English cognate. As
compensation, I'll note that celoso translates both `zealous' and
`jealous' (in English these words arrived from Latin zelosus via French at different times).

It is often the case that a single word in Spanish corresponds to two slightly
differently spelled close cognates of the word in English, but the divergence
does not always go in that direction. For example, the English word
respect corresponds to Spanish respeto and respecto.
Thus, for example, les tengo gran respeto means `I have great respect
for them,' while the standard phrase con respecto a means `with respect
to.'

You know, if tangential thoughts hadn't so rudely interrupted this entry, I
could have been finished with it already. Now then, I need to add that the
Spanish word miga comes from the Latin mica (female
first-declension noun), meaning a particle or crumb or grain, especially of
salt. You may be tempted to take one with the news of what words this is
cognate with. It is not too surprising that it is cognate with Greek adjective
for `small, little,' with various surviving forms. In Doric, Boeotian, and
Ionic dialects, it occurred as mikkós (female nominative form
mikká, BTW). The variant mikós was also
widespread, found in materials from the 4 c. BCE to the 3 c. CE. By far the
most common literary forms of the Greek word, however, were
mikrós (hence the SI prefix) and
smikrós. Through Proto-Indo-European, these are believed to be
cognate with the English word small.

The Latin word mica entered English directly as a mineralogical term,
for a small particle of talc, selenite, or other crystalline inclusion when it
is one of a large number in a matrix of some other rock. The word was also
used for rocks containing micae (also micas). [There was, perhaps
understandably, some confusion, about both etymology and sense, with the Latin
micare (`to glitter, shine').] This meaning was abandoned as the term
came to be used systematically for one particular class of minerals that had
been common mica materials, namely (what we still now call) mica.

The word miga in Spanish developed another
meaning, but to avoid clutter in this glossary we try to discuss only one
meaning per entry, so you'll have to wait. Stop tapping your feet-- it's rude.
It is better to scroll down than to curse the browser.

miga

Spanish for `crumb.' Wait -- didn't we do that one already? Sort of: while the most common
meaning of the word miga is that of the English word `crumb' (in the
sense of a small amount or particle of anything, but mostly of bread), an
interesting, slightly less common, sense is one that is also a sense of the
word `crumb,' though now extremely rare: the soft inner part of a loaf of bread
that hasn't been hardened by baking. Thus, a loaf of bread consists of crust
and crumb.

The Enciclopedia Universal Ilustrada offers
translations of miga in this second sense and of migaja (synonym
of miga and crumb in the usual sense). Here they are in that
encyclopedia's standard order (which isn't alphabetical by language in Spanish
either):

Language

miga(bread interior)

migaja(crumb)

French

mie

miette

Italian

mollica

briciola, rimasuglio

English

crum

crumb

German

Krume

Krümchen

Portuguese

miolo

migalha

Catalan

molla

engruna

Esperanto

panmolajo, molajo

peceto, panpeceto

In French, mie has the same common senses
as Spanish miga, while the diminutive miette not surprisingly
only means `crumb.' The Italian mollica seems primarily to have the
sense of loaf interior, though the plural molliche means `crumbs.'
Briciola means `crumb,' but rimasuglio primarily means `[food]
remnant, left-overs.' The putative semantic distinction between the English
words crum and crumb exists only in a diachronic analysis: the
spelling variant with the b seems to have arisen only around 1800, under the
influence of the earlier crumble and dumb (how abt). Since the
soft-interior sense of crumb seems to have petered out in the 1800's,
one may say loosely that over time, crum had both senses and
crumb had only one. I plan to check the other translations someday.

I just want to record here that 2009 seems to be the year when the modal
might seriously began to lose its distinctive functions to may.
Here's an example: ``She's always figured the child may be John's, but the
positive DNA result really floored her.''

might could

A charming locution pretty much restricted to the US Southeast, meaning
mostly `might be able to.'

might should

Another charming composite modal like might
could. We might should adopt it.

A gry is a tenth of a line, and a line is a twelfth of an inch, so a gry is
1/120 inch or about 211.6666667 µm, proving once again how ugly metric
units are.

mil

A unit of angle measure and a number. In fact, it's a number of units of
angular measure. Name-appropriately, mils are a popular and now widely
standard unit for use in artillery ranging and other military applications.

Mils, or ``angular mils,'' are generally almost exactly equal to a milliradian.
Mils are typically defined as fractions of 360 degrees, and can be thought of
as equivalent to approximations of π. The largest mil so defined is
equivalent to a milliradian in the π=3 approximation:
1 mil = 2000π mrad / 6000.
This was used in the former Soviet Union and Finland; Finland is switching over
to the NATO mil. Other implicit values of π that have been common are
3.1415 (perhaps), 3.15 (formerly used by Sweden, which has moved to the NATO
standard), and 3.2 (NATO standard). I write ``perhaps'' for 3.1415, which
corresponds to the mil said to be used by many manufacturers of telescopic
sights for civilian use, because it's not clear that saying a mil is defined as
1/6283 of a circle isn't simply an awkward way of saying it's defined to
approximate a milliradian as closely as possible.

Mils are often described, if not defined, as the angle subtended by one foo at
a distance of one thousand foos, where foo is typically ``yard'' or ``meter.''
This is equivalent to defining the mil as 2×Arcsin(1/2000) or about
(1 + 4.1666671×10-8) mrad. Of course, the
thing that makes mils convenient is the same thing that makes this description
accurate: the fact that in the small-angle limit, the sine of an angle
approaches the angle (in the natural units, radians).

Before the military forces of the world discovered the small-angle
approximation, another unit was popular: the decigrad (the grad being defined
as 1/100 of a right angle, or 0.9 degrees).

In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, Richard P. Feynman described some
of his WWII work on mechanical analog computers
for, iirc, bomb sights.

Slang for `million' or `million dollars.' Exact (i.e., 106)
as opposed to Million-.

MiLB

MInor League Baseball.
``The minors.'' In North America, it comprises three levels; in order of
increasing prestige and player quality, they are imaginatively called A, AA,
and AAA. Okay, this doesn't cover all the leagues. There are also Rookie
Leagues, which are regarded as the lowest classification, and Winter Leagues,
which run the gamut of levels of play. Some of the Class A Leagues are further
distinguished as short-season or advanced.

The minors serve as the ``farm system'' that grows players for ``the show,''
a/k/a ``the majors,'' ``big league,'' or MLB.
Each team in the minors, with the exception of the Winter League teams, is part
of the farm system of some team in the majors. Players are transferred back
and forth up and down the Minor League levels, usually within the farm system
of a Major League team. There are also a number of independent baseball
leagues; they are not affiliated with any MLB team and are not part of the MiLB
system.

Minor League Baseball was officially known as the National Association of
Professional Baseball Leagues (NAPBL) until 1999. NAPBL was founded in 1901.
Major League Baseball and NAPBL reached a wide-ranging cooperative agreement
in 1902, but the practice of having minor-league teams owned by particular
major-league teams came much later.

The first season of NAPBL was 1902, with 14 leagues and 96 teams. As of 2008,
there were 188 teams.

And fwiw, this afternoon, April 29, 2006, this glossary begins its fourth
myriad of entries.

MILF

Moro Islamic Liberation Front. One of four groups fighting for an
independent Islamic state in the south of the predominantly Catholic Philippines. There is reported to be some evidence
that MILF has collaborated with Al Qaeda.

I know what you're thinking. You figure that the Greek word moron,
meaning `dull,' has dropped the final en, the same way
Platôn dropped the final en to
become Plato. However, that doesn't always happen even in English.
(E.g., the last king of Syracuse before the Romans conquered it, the
king for whom Archimedes designed novel weaponry, is called Gellon in English.)
It happens less often in Spanish. Good guess,
though! Moro is the Spanish word for a Moor, related to the name of the
country Morocco. The word has been used with varying degrees of precision for
people like Moors. (Think of Othello.) The words moreno/morena (more
common in Spain) and morocho/morocha (chiefly Latin American) mean
dark-skinned (adjective and, technically, pronoun).

The Moors were, of course, mostly Muslim.
In the Philippines, moro refers to a Filipino Muslim. Islam was
introduced to the Philippines from Borneo and Malaya in the 14th century, and
currently about 5 per cent of the Filipino population, mostly in the South, is
Muslim.

MILF

Mother I'd Like to beFriend. Or something like that.

military service

New York State children between the ages of 6 and 16 are required to
attend school. Only the following are considered by the State Education
Department to be legitimate reasons for absence or tardiness:

illness, or death in the family

military obligations

approved college visits

required presence in court

religious observance

impassable roads or inclement weather

attendance at health clinics

I am most intrigued by the ``military obligations'' exemption for
6-to-16-year-olds. When my great grandmother became a naturalized citizen
of the US, she was asked if she would serve in the armed forces if called
to. We won't say exactly what her age was. Let's just say that the
question was preposterous. She replied, ``Me? An old woman? I'll cook
for the troops!'' This was apparently recorded as ``I do.''

My great grandmother was known as ``Grandma Moses.'' This was not because
of her spunk or her artistic ability, but because of her surname.

Milk Duds

The company originally tried to make the candies spherical, but failed.
The imperfect resulting candies were called ``duds.'' They sold them anyway.

milk shake

Burger King shakes are sweeter than McDonalds. Too sweet -- but that's
just my opinion. Wendy's sells ``frosties'' that aren't liquid enough to sip
because Wendy's straws collapse under the necessary vaccuum; use a spoon. Some
ice cream places have a machine that use to make a shake out of some scoops of
their ice cream and some milk. I encountered one of these at La Fortune
(Notre Dame's student center). I wondered what would
happen if you made a shake out of chocolate-chip mint ice cream. I found out
that what happens is that you get a mint shake with a chocolate chip clot at
the bottom of the cup.

Wait, you wanted to know about milk snakes? That's okay: we have a
little something about them too; see under Regina
CREAMER.

Milky Way Galaxy

From a strict etymological point of view, this term is a pleonasm:
galaxy comes from the Greek gala, `milk.' (Current Greek pronunciation makes this hard to hear: the
gamma is pronounced back under the epiglottis, and sounds like an arr in many
accents.) This information is duplicated and then some at the galaxy entry.

A mechanism whereby certain parasitics can decrease (i.e.,
degrade) the input impedance in an amplified way. The effect is
essentially the same for all voltage amplifiers. The general voltage
amplifier is a two-port, with a high-impedance input (between + and - on
the input side) and a low-impedance output (between + and - on the output
side). In the simplest voltage amplifiers, the - terminals of both ports
are a common ground, and the input and output + terminals are gate and drain
(common-source FET), base and collector (common-emitter BJT), or grid
and anode (vacuum tube), respectively.

In the linear regime, the output contains a dependent current or voltage
source linear in the voltage across an input impedance between + and - of
the input. The small-signal equivalent circuit generally has an (ideally
low-conductance) element connecting input and output + terminals
[y++ =
yBC
or yDG]. This leads to an
input current proportional to the difference in input and output. The Miller
effect is that, because the output voltage is amplified (by a gain factor
A), the input conductance is increased by an amount
y++ (1-A) instead of
just y++. [For the devices
mentioned, A < 0; for a good voltage amplifier, |A| » 1.]

The Miller effect is put to good use in Op Amps: by using Miller effect
to increase parasitic capacitance associated with one part of the
amplifier relative to the capacitance of another, poles are kept apart
to maintain stability. (Two nearby poles can cause a 180 degree phase
shift and associated feedback problems.)

Million-

A hundred thousand or more. Specialized usage in national mall events like
``Million-Man March,'' ``Million-Mom March.''

MILSTAR

MILitary Strategic, Tactical And Relay. Acronym for satellite
communication.

MIL-STD

MILitary STanDard.

MIM

Maoist Internationalist Movement. Self-described in MIM Notes 322 (and I suppose other issues) as
``the collection of existing or emerging Maoist internationalist parties in
English-speaking imperialist countries and their English-speaking internal
semi-colonies, as well as the existing or emerging Maoist internationalist
parties in Belgium, France and Quebec and the existing or emerging
Spanish-speaking Maoist internationalist parties of Azatlan, Puerto Rico and
other territories of the U.$. Empire.'' [The last is probably a typo; I
believe they prefer ``u.$. Empire.''] Oh blast, comrade, that sentence looks
like it was constructed by a committee of centrals. It's good to see that none
of the existing or emerging Maoist internationalist parties is described as
English-speaking. I might cavil at that. For when you're not sure whether you
want to laugh or be bored to sleep, MIM has, after a fashion, its own web presence. (It also
owns the <mim.org> domain.)

MIM

Mendeleev Institute of Metrology. In St. Petersburg, Russia. Formerly in
Leningrad, USSR. They moved the whole thing!!???

From AOL version 6.0 on, it is impossible to send
text/plain content. It is of course possible for an AOL subscriber
to, say, connect to the internet via AOL, and then use non-AOL software such as
a browser or telnet client over that connection. However, the same is not true
for email: AOL's proprietary internal mail protocol prevents AOL users from
using an alternative MUA for email sent to or from
an aol.com address. You can contact the online help chat, and once you get the
friendly serviceperson to wrap its head around the idea that you do not
want ``plain text'' encoded as MIME-type text/html,
but instead want plain text encoded as text/plain, just as God intended, that
polite person may recommend that you install version 5 if you want that to
happen. One reason you are unlikely to want to do that is the temporary
inconvenience of installing the older AOL version. Another reason not to do it
is the temporary inconvenience of reinstalling the newer version, after you
discover that AOL servers are not backward-compatible with older versions of
AOL software. The upshot is that you can't send Content-Type: text/plain
from an AOL address. In many civilized venues, this means that it is
impossible for an AOLuser to participate as an adult.

In Unix, a typical mail or news application uses
metamail to interpret any MIME types it doesn't know how to handle. Metamail
in turn mostly just looks in a mailcaps file (default search path
$HOME/.mailcap:/etc/mailcap:/usr/etc/mailcap:/usr/local/etc/mailcap may be
overridden by the environmental variable MAILCAPS) and passes the item to the
application designated as capable of handling the relevant type/subtype.

Multiple-Input/Multiple-Output. Next Monday in the Electrical Engineering
Conference Room, a student is doing his oral candidacy presentation on a
research topic entitled ``Bounds on the capacity of a MIMO channel with unknown
funding.'' That sounds interdisciplinary, but there aren't any industrial
engineering or government studies faculty on the committee.

Spanish for `mine,' of the underground
variety. Do you really need a Spanish-English dictionary? Cf.mío.

MINAC

A general purpose computer completed in 1953, according to various Internet
sources. It's not clear what the expansion was or even if it had one. On the
usual pattern, the AC should have stood for Automatic Computer. According to
the Giant Computers file, this
small computer contained only 90 tubes and 900
crystals (rectifiers), and occupied one square
foot. So it's possible MIN stood for MINi. As I'll eventually explain, I
think it probably stood for MINimum latency.

mind

Speaking to a Nashville luncheon of the United Negro College Fund
on May 9, 1989, then-vice president J. Danforth Quayle stumbled in trying
to speak the UNCF's long-time campaign slogan,
and came out with a memorable boner:

``What a waste it is to lose one's mind.
Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.''

Someone must have remarked that such a statement could be construed as
self-referential.
Cf.deconstruction.

mind.

Common abbreviation of the German word mindestens meaning `at
least.'

Mindef

MINistry of DEFence. A standard abbreviation in Singapore. At least they
don't call it Minluv. (For a similar such name, see the entry for
bad guys' organizations.)

Volume 22 (1961-62) of Analysis (a journal of analytical philosophy)
is a 152-page joke. Okay, to be precise the first 150 pages are merely
risible, and the last article (pp. 151-2) is a joke entitled ``MINIAC: World's
Smallest Electronic Brain1.'' Footnote 1 reads: Not to be confused
with the automatic computer manufactured by Marchant Calculators, Inc., which
costs approximately, 8.5 × 106 times as much and is not nearly
so small.

minim

For something that generally means the smallest thing, this word sure has a
large number of meanings. Among those meanings is
a half note or rest (which was typically the shortest time interval used in
music in an earlier, more leisurely time when time was taken at a more
measured pace). A minim is also a fluid measure equal to 1/60 dram.
It is used in some dialects to mean any small fish, but especially a
minnow (which seems to have a distinct etymology). The name Minim was
also given to a member of (I mean to an entire member who belonged to) a
mendicant religious order founded in the fifteenth century by Saint Francis
of Paola. In the fifteenth century, minims were big.

The useful sense for which the word has no adequate synonym, however, has to do
with the Gothic letters of late Medieval manuscript, used throughout Europe but
most directly influencing the German typescript called Fraktur. Anyway, if you
look at any of those Gothic texts, you'll notice that much of the lower-case
text looks like a half-height fence -- a long low sequence of fat vertical
strokes that could be mmmm or nnnn or unnu or whatever. Each vertical stroke
of one of these letters was a minim -- three in an em, two in an en or `u.'
With a little beveling at the top or bottom of a minim, you could make some
other letters, though you couldn't really read them. It was almost as bad as
Oriya. (A single minim represented an i; the
practice began of putting accents on the letters i so they could be
distinguished, and these evolved into the current dots.)

minium

Also called red lead. Its common formula is Pb3O4.
It's not a spinel, but it has a similar
structure.
Minium has a number of what may be indulgently described as ``systematic''
names, some of them sanctioned at various times by some official body. One
purpose of such names is to allow someone with the appropriate technical
background to understand instantly the chemical structure of compound upon
encountering the name. At this task, these names have at best middling
success. The names I have seen published in books are the following:

lead tetroxide,

lead (II, IV) tetroxide,

lead (II, II, IV) oxide,

trilead tetroxide,

lead orthoplumbate,

lead (II) orthoplumbate,

plumbous orthoplumbate.

It's as bad as organic nomenclature! If you try doing a web search on the word
minium, a large fraction of your hits will be for instances of
aluminium broken before the first em.
You might find it convenient to commit its CAS registry number to memory. I
wish I had (1314-41-6).

As you may guess from the names, I have read some contradictory information
about red lead. It does have at least one allomorph, but it seems that the red
tetragonal phase is the stable one at standard temperature and pressure. There
is another lead oxide that is sometimes associated with red lead in some way,
and that other phase, or one of the other phases, may be black. But that black
phase may be a red herring (sorry), because the sesquioxide is normally black
(and monoclinic). I'm on the case! This is an interim report.

Two red minerals were well known to the ancient world: one was red lead,
the subject of this entry, and the other was mercuric sulfide, or cinnabar. A Roman craftsman would have had no
difficulty distingishing between pure samples of the two. Most immediately,
they could be distinguished because cinnabar has a more brilliant red color.
Book XXXIII, sec. 119 of Pliny's Natural History indicates that they
were also able to (as we would say) reduce
cinnabar under heat to produce liquid mercury, so they had a chemical assay.

The word minium entered Middle English from Latin, but the word apparently does not go back to
proto-Indo-European and its ultimate etymology is unclear. It is believed to
be related to the Basque word armineá, which means `cinnabar.'
It is hard to know precisely what was meant by the word minium in Latin,
since writers sometimes either were unaware of or confused about the difference
between the minerals. (Pliny, confused as he himself was, mentions various
instances of confusion.) In addition, even when writers knew what they meant,
what they wrote does not give us enough clues for us to know. Nevertheless,
the preponderance of the evidence suggests that minium has switched from
describing the brighter (cinnabar) to the duller (red lead) mineral. It's not
hard to see how
this might have occurred. Pliny reports that cinnabar was adulterated in many
ways. [Since the price was fixed by law (70 sesterces per pound), it was
impossible to reward honesty with a higher price, so this is hardly surprising.
See also next paragraph.] The first adulterant he mentions is red lead (either
native or prepared by heating cerusite -- lead carbonate). He describes it as
secundarium minium, where context implies that by secundarium he
means `second-rate.' At any rate, minium secundarium was the standard
way of referring to what we now call minium. Pliny gives some evidence of
confusion at various places where he mentions either of the two minerals.
He also notes that use of a Greek-origin word (our cinnabar) was causing
[further] confusion.

If the word for the mercury compound (viz.minium in its original
sense) should have a Basque etymon it would not be surprising: Spain is still
today the world's leading source of cinnabar. However, for the Carthaginians,
and for
the Romans after they took it over from them, Iberia was a source of mineral
riches primarily in the form of silver. [Yes, the Athenian silver mines of
Laurion had also been an important lead resource, but by late Republican Roman
times they were mostly exhausted, and the Spanish mines were by far the most
important.] Silver mines are lead mines, for reasons explained at the pluton entry. The silver is extracted from galena
(lead ore) by a process called cupellation, and lead is a byproduct. Galena is
lead sulfide (PbS), so perhaps it is not too surprising that the lead compound
minium and the sulfide cinnabar both are often found in the vicinity.
According to Pliny the most famous Spanish cinnabar mine, and the most
important one in terms of revenues for the Roman state, was the one in Almaden
(where silver was not found). Raw cinnabar ore from Almaden (as much as
a ton per annum) was required to be shipped to Rome, where one company was
granted a monopoly for its production.

Snazzy names with minerals seem to be a status thing, like fine clothes with
people. Cinnabar gets a choice of exotic names and casts off a perfectly
serviceable but unwanted excess name like minium. Cinnabar even has a
distinct name, vermilion, for its color. The
mineral minium, on the other hand, in addition to having to make do with a
hand-me-down name, has to share that name with its color, which is either
called minium or minium red. To make matters even more humiliating, the drab
name red lead (or is that read led? homonyms are so confusing!) has apparently
led to some confusion, and minium is sometimes called red minium, as if there
were any other kind.

Ministry of Truth. The adjective formed from Minitrue is Minitruthful --
irregular because euphony trumps regularity in the B vocabulary of Newspeak
(political words). Minitrue is Winston Smith's place of employment in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). It's the propaganda
ministry, occupying a 300-foot pyramidal building. All four ministries are
housed in such bomb-proof pyramids. Ever since Babel, it seems,
science-fiction writers have identified large buildings with evil or menace, or
at least with organizations of bad
guys. In That Hideous Strength,
N.I.C.E. has something similar planned.

mink

Starting in the 1970's, Swedish Defense Forces security equipment detected
sounds that Sweden identified as Soviet submarine
intrusions into its territorial waters. The Swedish Navy discovered in 1992
that minks make sounds which the detectors could misinterpret as submarines.
No submarine intrusions were detected after 1992.

I once dated a woman whose father had owned a mink ranch. Perhaps that dates
me. You know, minks are carnivores. If you think about it, you realize
that raising carnivores is a lot more expensive than raising herbivores. They
also tend to be a bit less social, you know? And a bit wilier and more on the
look-out for a way to escape. What with all the meat-handling he did, he
eventually started a meat-canning business as a sideline.

MINK region

Missouri-Iowa-Nebraska-Kansas REGION. This particular region wasn't
defined because the named states are contiguous or have similar geology or
climate or land use or anything. And agricultural and ecological research
never focuses on this region because good weather records are available going
back at least to the 1930's. It just made a cool name, that's all.

You know, German aircraft supporting the NATO mission
in Afghanistan are not allowed to fly at night in areas where there might be
trouble. God forbid, someone might get hurt! MINUSTAH also operates under
European-style rules of ``engagement.'' The mission has 8800 soldiers and
police, which is woefully inadequate and also larger than Haiti's official
police force (only about half of whom actually show up to work). Some Haitians
use the alternate name TOURISTAH, because they're only found in the safe places
where they're not needed. Again we see the Francophone propensity to use
apparent acronyms without proper expansions.
It's scandalous! (It would also have been helpful if the original
acronym had picked up the E in en, since the proper spelling of the tee
word is touriste.)

minutes to complete, this survey should take no more than 10

It will take less than ten minutes to read the questions and check off
some answers. We're not figuring in any time for thinking about the answers
because we didn't think of it. We don't expect you to take any time thinking
about them. Heck, we didn't spend any time thinking about the questions
or the multiple-choice answers. It's okay that they're ambiguous; we'll
interpret them later.

Mio

MIlliOn. Abbreviation that occurs in EU
statistical literature. Note that the letter o is the first letter in
million that distinguishes it from milliard (Mrd).

I hasten to assure those suffering shell-shock from the revelations about pumps
and exploitation (miga entry above) that
mío is only a posessive pronoun, and not an explosive or
exploitable thing below.

Million Instruction(s) Per Second. The
``S'' represents the time unit `second' and not plural inflection, so
one speaks of ``one MIPS.'' This makes it rather unfortunate that one common
way to write this uses lower-case ess. Nobody says
``mipses'' -- the plural form of MIPS is MIPS.

Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria. Spanish: `Movement of the Revolutionary Left,' a
Bolivian political party.

miracle, the

The fact that silicon has a native oxide with good mechanical properties,
which serves as a diffusion mask, passivation, and dielectric.

In contrast, germanium (Ge), which is much
easier to grow in single-crystal form and was therefore the basis of all the
early progress in semiconductor (transistor) electronics, has an oxide that
dissolves in water (and desorbs at 450 °C).

There are other opinions, of course. According to Thomas Carlyle, ``Certainly
the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised.''
Of course, Tom never had the opportunity to experience television, laser light
shows, or nitro-burning funny cars!

You probably don't realize it, but this glossary is really a blog. We just
don't like that reverse chronological ordering (and using mirrors would make it
hard to read). So we use a different ordering. (If you guessed
``alphabetical,'' you may be half right; the judges are deciding how to score
that. Gary has submitted an amicus curiae
brief, summarized at the collating sequence
entry.)

This entry was provoked by Bob Patrick, who started an old-fashioned blog
called ``Latin Proverb of the
Day.'' His proverb
for 17.08.05 is Forma viros neglecta decet, which he translates
`Neglected concern for appearance is befitting men.' (I'm not sure it's a
proverb, but it is Latin. It's from Ovid's
scandalous
Ars
Amatoria, 1.509.) I don't think Bob Patrick gets it, but the meaning
is obvious and I'm happy for his blog, so I won't get into that. I want to
write about mirrors. (Considering that this is the mirrors entry, I figured I
should warn you.) Bob Patrick, contemplating Ovid's thought, observes that
weight rooms are full of mirrors, and
supposes that they're there so people can check each other out. No, no,
noooOOOOOOoooo!

Mirrors in a weight room serve many important purposes:

To monitor ourselves for proper ``form,'' especially with free
weights.

To make the room feel psychologically larger and airier, making us
feel less sweaty. When we feel just a little bit less sweaty, we do
that crucial extra rep.

To see around the corner whether the next machine we want to use is
free yet.

To make sure we're lifting the correct weights, especially on the
resistance machines. (You're thinking that we should have checked
before we got on? That doesn't always work. If this seems
implausible, see the ``aside'' below.)

To keep us from checking each other out. Without the mirrors, you
could look directly at anyone who wasn't looking at you, and know that
he or she (usually one or the other) wasn't looking back along some
other optical path. With the mirrors, there are so many ways to be
caught staring that you can't do it with impunity. Unless you don't
care.

To check each other out.

Aside on resistance machines: many of them are loaded with
stacks of oblong metal plates. These are shaped like broad, short (about an
inch high) bricks. Their upper and lower surfaces are approximately flat and
smooth, so the force is spread out when they stack (or bang together). They
have holes (usually two) bored vertically through the short dimension of the
plate, located symmetrically away from the center (along the longer
center-line). A vertical guide rod goes through each stack of these holes in
the plate stack, keeping the plates aligned. Those rods are lubricated, and
some of the lubricant (a light oil; see
CAMELSPIN) spreads along the horizontal faces
of the plates.

You probably don't need to read this paragraph.
To adjust the resistance, you push a pin into one of the plates (there's a
horizontal hole or slot for this in each plate). The pin catches on a vertical
tongue (this passes through a third vertical bore, this one centered), so that
you lift the selected plate along with all the ones stacked above it.

When your movement in the machine lifts a subset of the plate stack, one or two
of the plates below the selected stack may come along as well. They seem stuck
to the plates above, but it's not quite ordinary adhesion. The force provided
by surface tension in the spread-out oil is enough to pull along a plate or two
(i.e., as much as 40 lb.). In principle, the pressure of the air around
the circumference of the oil slick should shrink it to the point where it can't
hold the plate. This will eventually happen if your set lasts long enough.
The problem seems to be particularly severe on the old Polaris-brand machines,
which sometimes have the plate stack behind the user. You do three or four
reps, thinking you feel a bit weak, and you hear a
clang as one plate crashes and lightens your load, then you go on another
couple and another plate crashes. It's one way to push the envelope.

Oily plates are rarely a problem on Universal machines, evidently because the
plates, with upper edges rounded and bottom surfaces slotted, don't spoon
snugly. Cybex plates are also only roughly flat -- they have some texture on a
millimeter scale, so they don't suffer oily-plate sticking either.

Some Cybex machines do have another sticking problem, however. The guide rods
run through the plate stack down to the machine frame, and usually there is
something elastic around the bottom of the guide rods, so the bottom plate
doesn't rest directly on the machine frame. Some machines have metal springs
very similar to those that close the valves on a gasoline engine. These are
okay. Other Cybex machines use a hard rubber annulus around the bottom of each
rod. Since the rubber is under almost constant compression and since it is,
well, a little bit rubbery, it sticks to the bottom plate and the frame.
Hence, when you max out the stack, you have to unstick each rubber annulus from
either the bottom plate or the frame. It feels like maybe ten extra pounds to
unstick it the first time. (It's a different kind of experience from oily
sticking, however, since you can't lift the stack until you've pulled the
bottom plate free.) Anyway, just mention it to Ryan or whoever and he'll spray
some WD-40 on the rubber and the underside of the bottom plate while you hold
up the stack. Don't forget to mention later that the fix lasted less than a
day.

It's also disturbing, although you know it doesn't matter,
when you see one annulus rise, stuck to the bottom plate, while the other
annulus stays stuck to the frame. Some Polaris machines have the bottom plate
rest directly on the frame; this looks bad when exposed (abraded paint) but is
less subject to any kind of sticking. Universal machines often use rubber
annuli (broader than, but otherwise similar to, those of Cybex machines). What
I haven't seen is any machine that uses a washer between the plate and rubber.

A lot of machines are loaded like dumbbells -- you hand-load free circular
plates to set the resistance. These machines typically also have rubber pads
to limit motion, but since such machines spend most of the time unloaded, the
rubber doesn't stick noticeably.

I suppose another use of mirrors in training would be to pretend you're lifting
a great weight along a wall when you're really only pushing it along the floor.
I'm just full of practical suggestions.

Okay, here's something to do with mirrors in weight rooms, and it might cast
some light on the question of what they're there for. It's from an article in
Men's Fitness, issue on the racks in January 2006. (This is the issue
that features UFC ring-card girl Rachelle Leah on
the cover. A woman whose name is constructed from the names of Jacob's two
wives, hmmm. This is the famous issue that ranked Baltimore as America's
``fittest city,'' so you may want to take the information in it with a grain of
salt.)

On page 98 there were some budget tips for designing a home gym: ``#3 Install
lighting that flatters your physique. Quality lighting is worth the expense.
Looking good in the mirror during a workout makes you feel good and will keep
you motivated. A single lightbulb with a string attached? It may be cheaper,
but it will leave you feeling flabby and pathetic.'' I didn't notice any
specific positive recommendations on lighting, but the meat section at the
supermarket uses pink fluorescents to make the meat look good, so try that.
Here's an idea: in ``A Streetcar Named Desire,'' Blanche DuBois says, ``I can't
stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar
action.'' She bought this adorable little colored paper lantern at a Chinese
shop on Bourbon, which she gives to ``Mitch'' to install. That can't be too
expensive, and Stanley Kowalski's (Marlon Brando's) physique looked good in
that. Of course, that was before he began to commit slow suicide by bursting
belly. For expensive lighting, see the EU entry.

There's a popular German weekly magazineDer
Spiegel, whose title means `the mirror.' The German word was borrowed a
very long time ago from the Latinspeculum.
(Interesting that the grammatical gender switched from neuter to male.)

Plutarch's life of Demosthenes records an early instance of the use of mirrors
in physical training. Here's the relevant bit from John Dryden's
translation:

Demetrius, the Phalerian, tells us that he was informed by Demosthenes
himself, now grown old, that the ways he made use of to remedy his natural
bodily infirmities and defects were such as these; ... in his house he had
a large looking-glass, before which he would stand and go through his
exercises.

Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry
Vehicles. Ballistic missile technology for carrying multiple warheads on a
single missile. Ballistic missiles exit the atmosphere in the ascent stage.
``Reentry'' refers to reentry into the atmosphere. Pronounced like the
nickname Merv. Cf.argonaut.

MIS

Management Information Systems.

MIS

Management-Initiated Separation. Old IBM
euphemism for firing. Sounds more like a dysphemism, à la B.O.

Later, ``stimulated emission'' was
used to describe the slightly more human practice of induced (rather than
forced) resignation.

An aesthetic (not anaesthetic) championed by the movie critic
André Bazin and New
Wave film directors such as Jean-Luc Godard (1930-) and François
Truffaut (1932-84), each of whom started writing for Cahiers du Cinema
in the early 50's, and each of whom made his first feature film in 1959.

In literal translation, mise en scène is `staging.' No one knows
what it means, so you can use the phrase wherever you feel you can intimidate
your audience into not challenging your use of it.

MISL

Major Indoor Soccer League. Pronounced
``mizzle,'' it was a fizzle. It's one of the many failed efforts to interest
Americans in that foreign sport that calls itself ``football'' in places that
don't have the real thing. It's got a website and all, with scoreboards and
draft news and all, trumpeting an ESPN2 broadcast contract, all just as if it
were a successful sports league. I'd heard of corpses walking, but having them
jump and skull the ball -- that's a new one on me.

miso

Japanese, `fermented soybean paste.' Used as a
soup thickener and seasoning.

A municipality founded by
gringos whose ignorance of Spanish is celebrated in the name --
misión is female, so any
thinking person would either know that the adjective should be
vieja or would ask someone who actually knew the language. The
only circumstance allowing male gender here would be that Viejo were a family
name, which it isn't.

Viejo means `old,' so the name seems intended to suggest (with
transparent deceit) that the town has been there since the local language was
Spanish. This ``old'' city was actually designed and founded in 1966 by the
Mission Viejo Company, which continues to design and found small towns in the
US (mostly California and Colorado, I think). Mission
Viejo Corporation was bought in the early 1970's by the Philip Morris Cos.,
Inc., which sold it to Shea Homes in 1997.

You might think it strange for a corporation to be designing, founding, and
owning an entire town. Eventually, a large-enough town would have its own
courts and police force (small towns rely on their counties'), making it seem
as if a part of the state government were owned by a private corporation. Then
again, maybe that isn't so unusual, official niceties aside. We don't have a
Levittowns entry yet. If you're looking for further amusement in this vein,
consider the
town of Bridgeville, California.

Mission Viejo is on I-5 a few miles north and inland
from San Juan Capistrano, near the southern endpoint of the PCH.

misspelled city names

We have a list of them, courtesy of
ePodunk (more about them below). They
conducted a
study of the subject (apparently first released in July 2001). They
analyzed ``6 months of search entries on its Web site, which profiles
communities across the country. After compiling a list of misspellings,
ePodunk searched for incidences of the misspelled versions on the Web and in
major publications (through electronic information services such as
Lexis/Nexis).'' The result was a list ranking the 15 ``most misspelled cities
in America'':

The fifteen cities are distributed among ten states. Five states have two
cities in the list, and in two of those states -- Arizona and Pennsylvania --
the cities that made the list are the two largest cities of the state. Only
one state could have the most misspelled city name, and it is just that
Pennsylvania was that state. Pennsylvania toponyms are a rich subject.

I'm not aware of any similar list for other countries, but for Canada I
nominate Ottawa. For Latin America, or at least for Mexico, I nominate
México, D.F. Hmm...capitals both.

[``ePodunk was launched in 1999
in Ithaca, NY, just east of the real Podunk, a community so small it
doesn't appear on the U.S. Census Bureau's list of places. ePodunk was founded
by journalists with years of experience in newspapers, online publishing and
demographics.'' They ``believe in the power of place,'' and they have a lot
products related to real estate.]

Miss Spelling

The head term might be a misspelling of misspelling. Indeed, it is,
but that's not what the entry is about. It's about Tori Spelling. Something
else about her is sTori Telling, her autobiography. (No, I don't know
who wrote it. It's not inconceivable that
she did.) The book came out in March or late February 2008, and she was
flogging it from early in January. A widely reported quote went thus: ``As for
Luke Perry, he called me `camel' because I had long eyelashes. Trust me, Luke
Perry can call you `camel' and make it sexy.'' My hat is off to Perry; who
would have guessed that behind that pretty face was a brain that could think so
fast on its feet? Another place in this glossary where you may read almost
nothing about Miss Spelling (and that's as much as you want, after all) is the
alternate Spelling entry.

MIST

Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, and Turkey. Another catchy four-country
acronym to compete with PIGS and BRIC.
It was coined in January 2011 by Jim O'Neill, former chief economist of
Goldman Sachs and now chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management. As of June
2011, it hasn't caught on to anything like the extent that BRIC or PIGS has.
Mist, fwiw, is `dung' in German. (Pferdemist is `horseshit,'
etc.)

mistake

Mistakes come in two types, or sizes. There are mistakes I make, which are
understandable and excusable, and really hardly worth mentioning, except that
they serve as rare reminders that even I am only human. The other kind
are mistakes that others make, which are not always ridiculous, idiotic, evil,
contemptible, and outrageous, but certainly at least one of the above.

There. I just wanted to clear up your stupid confusion. For another mistake
dichotomy, see the black bra entry.

Mistakes were made.

I did wrong and haven't the courage to own it.

Mistra

MInnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart.

MIT

Manage{ment|r} -- Information Technology.

You can get a degree in this, but many businesses need much less. At least one
national restaurant chain I'm aware of promotes shift managers to MIT's via a
ten-week training course.

(He continues: ``But the mixture must not be of the fire and water type--which
unfortunately is exactly what we have here.'')

mixed vegetables

Carrots and peas, for example. Possibly even usually. You were
expecting maybe an intelligent comment? Oh, okay, we'll give it the old
college try.

The term ``mixed vegetables'' does not normally refer to vegetables of a single
type that have been mixed. That is, if you have a bowl of Italian-cut string
beans and you take a spoon and stir them around, that's not ``mixed
vegetables'' despite the fact that the individual beans are not identical
among themselves, as electrons are (so there's no ``bean exchange
interaction,'' even in string theory). I think that a mix of French-cut and
Italian-cut and pureed-from-too-much-mixing string beans is not mixed
vegetables either. It hardly seems fair. Xenophobia. I need to bone up on
the entropy-of-mixing aspects of this. Calico bean salad is not normally
called ``mixed vegetables'' either. I think what we have here is a term that
only looks like an ordinary compound, but which is really a slightly
specialized term with a meaning not completely inferrable from analysis.

mixed veggies

Chaos at the funny farm! Not the catatonia ward? Okay, maybe this, which you may have seen quite
recently.

MJ

Michael Jackson. A real talent for generating entertainment, one way or
another.

MJ

Mother Jones, a muckraking magazine
with haphazard fact-checking. Also MoJo.

MJAR

The Matsushiro ARray in Japan. Part of the
International Monitoring System (IMS) of seismic
stations. Probably not too far from MAJO.

Modified Julian Day. A modification of the Julian day system (videJD) defined so the MJD value is 2,400,000.5 less
than the JD value. This allows dates starting 1858.11.17 CE to have low
positive numbers. The extra 0.5 puts the beginning of the MJD at midnight
(the JD referred to here is the original-flavor astronomical JD).

Two million people live on about 10,000 sq. mi. of territory. If they
stood in pairs on a square grid, spaced a tenth of a mile apart in N-S
and E-W directions, well, that would be something, wouldn't it?

The capital is Skopje.

Mk, Mk.

MarK. Abbreviation used mostly in reference to the gospel of Mark (GMark). Markan (pertaining to GMark or to the writer
Mark, or to whatever redactor gave GMark the spin one is immediately concerned
with) is occasionally abbreviated ``Mkan.''

The common noun and verb mark is one of those basic words like
get that gets crazy-long dictionary entries. Because a mark is often
made to measure height or progress, by metonymy the word mark is used
to mean a level of development, and level designations like ``Mark I,'' ``Mark
II,'' etc. come to be used as proper names. Examples include the Lincoln Continental Marks
Series, various Mark 1
and Mark I computers, and the quality influence bureau for this glossary (it's
an informal operation; we don't have a quality control bureau). Mk.
sometimes abbreviates such nominal uses of Mark.

MK

Member of Knesset. Member of 120-seat Israeli Parliament. Cabinet members
may not sponsor legislation. Election is by party lists (Israel-wide at-large
voting), but as of the fourteenth Knesset, elected 1996, the prime minister is elected by direct vote. Here's
a site with a little more detail than a few weeks'-worth of repetitious
newsreports.

The number 120 is traditional from, I think post-exilic (post-Babylonian exile)
times, when 120 was the membership of a knesset gadol (gadol means
large). The number was ten (a good round number) times twelve (the
original number of tribes, and also a good number).

MK

Missionary Kid. Child of a missionary. The way these things work, usually
the child of two missionaries. In no reported instances is an MK the direct
offspring of three or more missionaries. Not just because it's impossible,
although that might contribute to the low frequency (zero) of reported
instances, but also because most missionaries are not into orgies and other
creative procreativity. Then again, any position they use is, by definition, a
missionary position. Standard gags like this are probably one of the reasons
that MK's seek each other out for support and to have sickeningly good clean
fun together (e.g., Mu Kappa).

The children of Salvation Army volunteers are both MK's and Army brats.

MKSA, mksA

Meter-Kilogram-Second-Ampere. The SI
electromagnetic base units, and the rationalized system of equations that goes
with it.

A brand name, along with Crixivan, for the protease inhibitor indinavir.
I think MK stands for Merck, the drug company that developed it.

.ml

(Domain name code for) Mali.

ML

Maximum Leader.

ML

Maximum Likelihood.

ML

Meat Loaf. A rock vocalist very successful when singing the music of Jim
Steinman (Bat Out Of Hell and Bat Out Of Hell II: Back To Hell),
and also a movie actor. (He will be remembered as the motorcycle guy who is
murdered and eaten in the cult classic Rocky Horror Picture Show, which
starred the rocker Tim Curry as Doctor Frankenfutter.) Born Marvin Lee Aday,
September 27, 1951, so maybe he gets dual use out of some of his monogrammed
stuff.

MilliLiter. Some biologists pronounce this `mil.' In fact, it turns out
that the use of `mil' as a pharmaceutical unit dates back to 1905 at least,
when mil was authorized as an official name for a milliliter by the
UK Board of Trade. Huh! (There is, however, a length unit by that name.) For a further discussion
of this fascinating topic, you are invited to visit the Pronunciation Sidebar under the
decibel (dB) entry.

You could probably save yourself a lot of argument by calling it a cc. Then again maybe not.

ML

MonoLayer. In semiconductor science, that means a layer one atom thick.
Monolayer-control is routinely achieved.

Member of Legislative Assembly. Used in Canada and India, where it refers
to a state (in India) or provincial (in Canada) legislature rather than a
national one. In Canada, an alternative is
MPP.

MLA

Modern Language Association. A
subversive organization founded in 1883. Its annual convention is held in
December. Perfect timing for soon-to-graduate graduate students in Engish to
interview and be disappointed, or not get any interviews and be even more
disappointed. Like the first book (Inferno, `Hell') of Dante's
Divine Comedy, it turns out that suffering can occur at many levels
(depths).

Louis Kampf explained this in 1967 (bibliographic source details at the
Brooks and Warren entry):

The MLA's power lies in its strong stomach, in its
capacity to digest almost everything, thus giving it institutional sanction.
It can do so because the professional standards it allegedly maintains do not
exist: there is no basis on which to exclude anything. Clearly the MLA, rather
than being a professional organization, is a trade association: its natural
drift is toward the councils of the Chamber of
Commerce, where it will best serve the social and economic aspirations of
its own membership.

One year when the MLA's annual meeting was held in San Francisco, a Bronx
native spotted Joe DiMaggio in the lobby of the conference hotel and introduced
himself. The great man was gracious as always, but he wanted to know what
MLA stood for. When told, he replied ``Modern languages? What the
hell's wrong with the old languages?''
Cf.RMMLA.

A lot of people unfamiliar with the game of baseball think it's a slow-moving,
boring game where people mostly wait, alternately in a sitting or slouching
position. (People familiar with baseball think that of
cricket.) However, this impression misses the
real action, which is in the strategy and tactics. The pitcher and the batter
try to fake each other out, as the fielders try to anticipate where the ball
will go. Baserunners coordinate their movements in part by anticipating each
others' actions rather than watching for them. Yes, baseball is a game of
expectorations. Major League Baseball is, anyway.
Minor League Baseball is a game of expectations, or
at least hopes.

MLB

Middle LineBacker (LB). Lines up between an
inside linebacker (ILB) and an outside
linebacker (OLB).

MultiLayer Ceramic Chip Capacitor. Currently (2005), the majority of
multilayer chip capacitors use a ceramic dielectric, but not all. A more
precise initialism would be MCCC, but this is rare. (MLCCC is not used at all
in this connection.)

MLCCC

Maple Leaf
Chow Chow Club. Chow Chow is a breed of dog. ``The Maple Leaf Chow
Chow Club was formed in 1973. Although our official area of operation is
the province of Ontario, we are a truly international club. We have members
from all across Canada, from British Columbia to Newfoundland'' and a number
of far- and near-flung countries. Members are bound by CKC bylaws.

``Real life speed eating contests approved by Major League Eating and the
International Federation of Competitive Eating are held only in a controlled
environment with appropriate rules and with an emergency medical technician
present.''

Takeru ``The Tsunami'' Kobayashi, six-time winner of the annual
Independence-Day Hot Dog-Eating Contest at Coney Island, ``did not eat this
year'' (2010, that is) because he refused to sign a contract with Major League
Eating. He explained on his Japanese-language blog that he wanted to be free
to compete in contests sanctioned by other groups. A few days before the 2010
event, however, he did tell Japan's Kyodo News that he really wanted to compete
in the Coney Island event. After the 2010 competition ended (in a fourth
consecutive win for Joey Chestnut), Kobayashi came on stage. He was welcomed
by host George Shea, but then security officers appeared and tried to usher him
off the stage. He was under arrest that night on charges of resisting arrest,
trespass, and obstructing governmental administration. (It wasn't clear from
news reports exactly which or how many of the security personnel were police.)

MLE

Maximum-Likelihood Estimation.

MLHG

Multi-Line Hunt Group.

MLK

Martin Luther King. The famous preacher and his father were named Michael
Luther King at birth. Junior was born in 1929 (on January 15, as you recall).
In 1934, following a trip to Europe, Senior had his and his son's names legally
changed to Martin Luther King in honor of the most famous Martin Luther.

MLLD

Mode-Locked Laser Diode.

MLM

Multi-Level Marketing. Join a straight-up pyramid scheme instead and get
it over with.

MLM

Multi-Level Metal.

MLM

Multi-Longitudinal Mode.

MLP

Master Limited Partnership. An MLP is a kind of limited partnership that
issues publicly traded ``investment units.'' The modern form of MLP's in the
US was defined by the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and the Revenue Act of 1987.
These stipulate how companies can structure their operations to realize certain
tax benefits afforded to MLP's. (Maybe they also explain what the word
``master'' is doing in the name. Read the legislation and get back to me when
you find out.) In order to qualify for MLP tax status, a firm must earn 90% of
its income through activities or interest and dividend payments relating to
natural resources, commodities or real estate.

MLP

Minor Latin Poets. There's an old fat Loeb volume (fat for a Loeb)
by that title.

MLP

Multi-Layer Perceptron.

MLP

Multi-Layer Protocol.

MLR

Minimum Lending Rate.

MLR

The International Monitoring System (IMS
code for the seismic station at Muntele Rosu, Romania. Currently a
3-C station, AFAIK. Part of the auxiliary
network.

Major League Soccer. Ten teams; the latest attempt (Spring 1996)
to get professional soccer going in the US (only slightly less difficult
than providing a valid proof of a logical impossibility). Reportedly
solvent.

MLS

Master of Liberal Studies. Plural (``Masters'') and ``in'' (rather than
``of'') forms are less common. This is just the degree for people who don't
want to learn anything in particular, but who want ``fresh perspectives and the
critical thinking, analytical, and communication skills so valued in today's
workplace.'' Alternatively, if you do want to learn something in particular,
but it doesn't happen to satisfy the requirements for any particular
conventional major, then this might be for you also. You usually have to pay
as much to audit a course as to take it for credit, so if you plan to take a
bunch of advanced courses, you might as well register for this degree, and
maybe accidentally stumble into a credential.

MLS

Masters of Library Science. For most academic librarian positions, two
masters degrees are a minimum. This would be one of them. It makes a big
difference, for library positions generally, whether the library science
program is ALA-accredited or not. Some libraries
require the degree to be from an accredited program. On the other hand, the
accreditation system is controversial, and ALA accreditation has been reputably
described as a disrecommendation.

One person at U VA (which no longer has an MLS program) writes

``MLS programs also have a tendency to come to an abrupt halt, or to change
their name to `Information Science' or some such.''

MLS

Microwave Landing System.

MLS

MultiLayered Structure.

MLS

Multiple Listing System. The industry-wide standard system for advertising
the availability of homes and other real estate in the US. If you wanted to
know (i.e., if you weren't ``just looking''), then you might want to
visit
<FreeHomeListings.com>.

MLT

MeLaTonin. As little as 0.1 mg has a detectable ability to facilitate
falling asleep. There are preliminary indications that it has a number of
medical benefits. Serotonin is a precursor.

Military Mail. Fan mail for
US military personnel. MM collects mail from individuals, groups of all kinds,
churches, schools, etc. all across the US, mixes it together, then sends it to
more than 1,000 places across the country and around the world. (The figure of
``more than 1,000'' applies to the Christmas mail--it is many fewer places at
other times during the year.)

MM is a continuation of the ``Vietnam Mail Call'' program established in 1965.

MM

Moderation Management. A
behavioral modification program and a national support group network for people
concerned about their drinking. Drinking alcohol, okay? If you're
worried that you're drinking too much hot cocoa, you're on your own.

Moving Magnet. Phonograph records are normally played (when they are still
played) by being turned on a turntable; a stylus rests in the groove of the
record, and the rotation of the record causes the stylus (or ``needle'') to
vibrate as it tracks the groove. In the earliest players, with hand-crank
turntables, the vibration of the stylus was transferred mechanically to a
diaphragm and a sort of megaphone. A dog would stand listening to it,
recognizing ``his master's voice.'' Except that the dog was optional and it
didn't have to be a Victrola. One improvement on this design was volume
control: the megaphone or equivalent was located inside the player cabinet, and
you could open or close the doors on the front of the cabinet. The styli [the
opportunity to use this plural was my only reason for not just calling them
needles] for these monsters were like small nails, and you bought many at a
time. The records didn't last very long either.

Electric phonograph players use electric motors to turn the disc and (since the
mid-1920's) electrical amplification of the stylus movement. This requires
something to convert the mechanical signal to an electrical one: a transducer
or pick-up. Originally, the transducer was a piezo-electric crystal. (Stylus
material has varied with cost considerations and the technical requirements of
increasingly narrow grooves, but sapphire and diamond generally superseded
steel, and since the 1960's diamond has been standard.)

I guess you didn't really need to know much of that. Eventually, magnetic
transducers were introduced. These give higher-fidelity playback. If you're
listening to vinyl in the twenty-first century, it's out of nostalgia or for
high fidelity, so in the latter case you're using a magnetic cartridge (the
cartridge is the housing that holds the stylus and transducer at the end of the
tonearm). All magnetic cartridges use a magnet and a pick-up coil (or a pair
of coils, for stereo), and work on the basis of Faraday's law of induction:
movement of the magnet changes the magnetic flux through the coil, and changes
in the magnetic flux through the coil induce an electromotive force
(EMF). EMF is a traditional term; in plain terms,
the EMF is the voltage between the ends of the coil wire. In principle, the
magnet could be electromagnetic, but in practice I think it's always a
permanent magnet or an induced magnet (a paramagnetic material with a
magnetization induced by a nearby permanent magnet).

An EMF is generated by relative motion of the magnet and coil. This is kind of
a big deal: Faraday's law was eventually incorporated in Maxwell's equations,
and the notion of ``relative motion'' implicit in Maxwell's equations led to
the Lorentz-FitzGerald transformations. As properly understood by Einstein,
they lead to the special (i.e., gravity-free) theory of relativity.

But if you're just interested in pick-up cartridges, the implications are more
circumscribed. Since transduction depends on relative motion, you can either
let the stylus move the coil while the magnet is ``fixed'' (i.e., is
attached to the much more massive and approximately stationary tonearm), or you
can let the stylus move the magnet while the coil is fixed. The former of
these is called the moving-coil (MC) configuration, and the latter may be
called a moving-magnet configuration (MM, remember?). If the magnet is simply
a permanent magnet, it's MM. However, cartridges in which the stylus moves an
induced magnet (typically soft iron) have ``moving iron'' designs. They are
not usually described as moving-magnet cartridges (perhaps because the
permanent magnet is normally fixed), but by some other more specific term.

The stylus may be a user-replaceable part of the cartridge. User-replaceable
styli are more common with MM cartridges than MC cartridges.

The last elected civilian prime minister of
Burma was U Nu. U Thant was a parliament secretary in the Ministry of
Information in U Nu's government. In 1952 U Thant became a Burmese delegate to
the U.N. and five years later became the country's permanent representative.
He served as Secretary General from 1961 to 1971. Since you want to know more,
you should go to this
page.

``So what'' you ask? So what? These are not only important diplomats who
achieved countless important diplomatic achievements -- they also had some of
the shortest names in the world!

MMA

Metropolitan Museum of Art. Or maybe the Museum of Modern Art. In New York City. If you want to be understood, say
``the Met'' or MOMA.

Muttahida Majlis e Amal. Pakistani `United Action Front.' A loose
coalition of religious political parties, both Sunni and Shia, which won 20% of
seats in the national parliament in the elections of October 2002, and in 2003
forms the government of the North West Frontier Province and shares power in
Baluchistan.

MMAC

Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center.
``Established in 1946 [in
Oklahoma City] by the Civil Aeronautics Administration as a centralized [and
convenient!] training and logistics facility with approximately 350 employees,
the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center has grown to become a major
organizational complex of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employing approximately 4,400 government and
contract personnel. In fact, the Aeronautical Center is the largest
concentration of Department of Transportation employees outside the Washington,
D.C. area!'' See also AIDA.

MMAM

Museo
Municipal de Arte Moderno. `Municipal Museum of Modern Art.' The name
of a museum (and associated cultural center with performance venues) in
Mendoza, Argentina.

Not that it's anything unusual, but it's probably
worth mentioning at least once: when the acronym is used in a sentence, it
functions as a noun and takes the male article el, as would
museo, the gender-determining noun of the noun phrase.

mmap

Memory MAP. Pronounced ``em map.''

MMC

Metal Matrix Composites.

MMC

MultiMedia Center. You were thinking of ``the most advanced communication
and information services company,'' right?
The one in the Caucasian republic of Georgia (.ge).

MonoMethylHydrazine. In organic chemical nomenclature, the mono that the
first em represents is conventionally implicit and omitted, so MMH abbreviates
what, written out in full, is usually just methylhydrazine.

Medina Metropolitan Housing Authority.
Not the Medina in Arabia. MMHA was established in 1953 as an independent
political subdivision of the state of Ohio. It
provides housing for low- to moderate-income residents of Medina County.

MMI

Man-Machine Interface.

MMI

Multi Media Interface. This is a stupid expansion, since multi is
not a word. Fortunately, the expansion won't be used very much since it's for
an MMI on which Audi claims a trademark. (Yes,
it's also stupid to claim a trademark on an acronym that has been in use for over a decade to mean pretty much what you want
it to mean. At least they're not claiming they registered it. Hold on --
I have to think it over. Maybe I don't mean stupid but asinine.)

MMIC

Monolithic { Microwave | Millimeter[-wave] } IC [Pronounced ``mimic.'']
(Electromagnetic radiation with millimeter-scale wavelengths is in the range
called microwave, so in principle the senses of the two expansions overlap. In
practice they're equivalent.)
Here's a page of
relevant links.

MicroMeteoroid or Orbital Debris. The reason why the logical AND of
MM or OD events is of interest is that either one might puncture something
vital.

MMPI

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. A group-administered
paper-and-pencil test first published in 1943 by Starke Hathaway, Ph.D., and
J. Charnley McKinley, M.D., both of the University of Minnesota Hospitals.
By the time it was replaced by the MMPI-2, it was
the most widely used personality inventory in the US and was widely used
throughout the world. The inventory was a routine screening instrument,
intended to determine just what kind of crazy you were. Maybe that's a little
harsh, but maybe not. At least, that's how I read the results. It was used on
job applicants and people in marriage counseling. I find that offensive, but
then again I find a lot of things offensive. Which is not to say that they
aren't objectively offensive, if there is a valid way to determine such a
thing.

MMPI was one of the earliest personality inventories to use ``empirical
keying.'' Previously, personality inventories had used a ``logical keying''
approach. Logical keying created targeted questions intended to detect various
personality characteristics, and personality scales were defined on the basis
of expected answers to those questions.

In empirical keying, scales are defined by correlating responses on the
inventory with other data (clinical data, professionals' evaluations, etc.;
eventually one scale, a measure of masculinity-femininity, was simply
correlated with sex).

[For example, in a simple
linear approach, one could assign to each tested person (labeled i) a value
yi by some external criterion (clinical evaluation if y represents
psychosis, say) and tally the answers xij given by person i on
inventory question j. A scale would be defined by assigning nonzero weights
wj to an appropriate subset of inventory items, and the y-scale
value of a particular person would be determined by taking the weighted sum
over all items (i.e., by summing xijwj over j).
The y-scale value is regarded as a prediction of externally assigned
yi. The work of defining the scale, which is to say of assigning
values to the weights wj, is typically done by a least-squares
technique, treating the weights as variables and adjusting them so as to
minimize the variance between externally assigned yi values and the
y-scale values determined by the linear (or some more complicated) formula.
There are various slightly different least squares techniques, and there are a
number of detailed issues to be worried about, such as the validity and
reliability of evaluators' assessments, the discreteness (as opposed to
continuity) of the yi values, etc.]

Psychologists give many reasons why empirical keying is
better than logical keying, but the fundamental reason is formal: the measure
of an inventory's validity is the smallness of the residuals between inventory
predictions and independent measures. Empirical keying simply minimizes the
residual by explicit calculation rather than by intuition or estimation. Most
claimed disadvantages (the empirically determined lower validity) of the
logical approach are directly implied by this general fact. Deficiencies in
question design are largely unavoidable; the MMPI was created by collecting
about 1000 statements (which examinees are to agree or disagree with) from
published sources, and selecting 504 that seemed ``independent.''

MMPI-D

The Depression scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory (MMPI). The MMPI has four validity
scales and ten clinical scales. The validity scales do not measure whether the
inventory itself has validity, and that is considered a good thing. They are
crude measures that attempt to detect whether the test-taker has been attentive
and honest. The validity scales can effectively detect whether the test-taker
was literate in the language that the questions are written in, stayed awake
through all 567 questions on the current (MMPI-2)
version of the inventory, and lied consistently. The
clinical scales, in addition to depression, are hypochondriasis, hysteria,
hypomania, psychopathic deviation, paranoia, psychasthenia, schizophrenia,
social introversion, and masculinity/femininity.

MMPI-2

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2. The initialism and its
expansion are trademarks owned by the University of Minnnesota. The result of
seven years of R&D, published in 1989 to replace the old MMPI.

MMR

Measles, Mumps, Rubella. In Britain, vaccination against these childhood
diseases used to be conducted in separate inoculations. In 2002, the
government started paying only for the one-shot vaccine, but many parents,
doubtful of its safety, were paying out-of-pocket for the individual
inoculations.

MMRA

Mandatory Manual Random Audits. To check that votes are being properly
counted.

Mariano Marcos State University.
In Batac, in the Phillipine state of Ilocos Norte. Officially Don Mariano
Marcos Memorial University, and sure enough they use the initialism DMMMSU,
even on building names.

MultiMegaWatt Steady State. The context of
this terminology was SDI. It was anticipated that
``alert mode'' operation of military satellites might require anywhere from
100 kW to a few MW of power, for periods of up to a year. In alert mode,
the satellite is monitoring hostile activity, and is prepared to switch to
``burst mode'' -- the mode of active war-fighting. Even the low-end
guesstimate of power needed in alert mode exceeded any space-based electrical
power system previously implemented by any US program. (A few systems, like
SP-100, were under consideration for the task,
but the research was largely abandoned after the Soviet Union collapsed,
bringing an end to the Cold War and heralding a long era of universal peace,
harmony, and loving kindness.)

In burst mode, power requirements were estimated to be in the range of tens to
hundreds of megawatts. It was expected, however, that this would be required
only for periods of minutes or an hour. This stretched technology far past
anything then available. Approaches to the problem of providing such large
bursts of energy included SMES and open-system
chemical and nuclear power sources.

(Domain name code for) Mongolia. Possibly the most
carnivorous nation on earth, just across China from probably the most
vegetarian nations on earth.

(Historically, I suppose that Eskimos, Aleuts, and others occupying the
iced-seafood ecological niche were probably even stricter carnivores.)

MNA

Member of the National Assembly. The Assemblée nationale du
Québec is the equivalent of the provincial parliaments of the
other Canadian provinces. They changed the name in 1969. It is no less
provincial, despite the absence of that word. I guess they couldn't use the
regular name because it's hard to find a satisfactory translation for such an
irretrievably Anglo-Saxon word as parliament. It
would offend the ear, or something.

MNA

Mehr News Agency. ``[E]stablished
in Tehran in June 2003 to provide accurate and up-to-the-minute information to
the public, with an emphasis on news about Iran and the rest of the Islamic
world.'' Cf.IRNA.

MNA

Mobile Navigation Assistant.

MNC

MultiNational Corporation.

MNCR

Mouvement National contre le Racisme.
An organization founded in 1941 by members of the French resistance who made
special efforts to save Jews. See also MRAP.

Master of [Arts in] Nonprofit Organizations. Offered by the Mandel Center
for Nonprofit Organizations (links at the NGO entry)
and by the
University of Georgia
Institute for Nonprofit Organizations (here's their fee
schedule). There are many masters programs (in Social Work and in Public
Administration) that offer concentrations in nonprofit organizations. There
are a few MNO programs with different names, such as Master of Science
in Nonprofit Management (at the New School
University and others). No need to take the word science there
overly seriously. This
page is a good place to start looking for such programs.

MNO-

666-. In the US and
Canada, the phone number 6 is labeled with the letters MNO, used for
mnemonics.

The US WWII battleship Missouri was called ``Big
Mo.'' At some point during a presidential campaign, George Bush exulted
that he had the ``Big Mo,'' but he meant MOmentum.

Many of the illiterate early settlers of Missouri thought that the
pronunciation /mizuri:/ was informal, like ``Caroliney'' for Carolina,
and assumed that the proper pronunciation of the territory's name should
end in shwa, like Carolina. That at least is the folk etymology of the
standard Midwestern US pronunciation of the state's name.

However, an entry in a nineteenth-century encyclopedia, quoted in full
at our American continent entry,
apparently gives the name of the Missouri River as ``Misaures.'' This is
presumably a French spelling (since French traders were the largest group of
Europeans in the area, since France was the main colonial claimant of the
territory until 1803, and since the word looks French, although in principle it
could be, say, English or Spanish). If the
appearance and presumption do not deceive, then the es at the end of the
name is silent (as in Modern French) or shwa-like (as in older and dialectal
pronunciations, I think). How does our hypothesis compare with hypotheses
entertained in other reference works of comparable scholarliness? Well, the
earliest instance of Missouri (dating to 1703, for the tribe) offered by
the OED is in a translation from the French. The
earliest names attested there for French are Ouemessourit (1673), Emissourita
(1684), Emessourita (1702), and a plural Missouris (1687). I think they may
have missed a parallel line of orthographic (and alternative pronunciation)
development.

MO, m.o.

Modus Operandi. [Latin for `way of operating.'] Used to describe
criminal technique.

MO

Molecular Orbital.

Mo

Molybdenum. Atomic number 42. In the second period of
transition metals. It's a very hard elemental metal to grind, but it's easy to
shorten the name. It tends to end up being called ``molly.''

Microlensing Observations in Astronomy. A collaboration that uses
gravitational microlensing to detect planets orbiting other stars. These are
events in which a dim, massive compact object (a faint star will do) passes in
front of a star-planet system. The nearer object bends light from the more
distant system, serving as a kind of a divergent lens. Of course, we can only
sample one ray coming through that lens from the partly occluded system, but
because there is a relative proper motion of the stars, one has in effect a
raster scan of one line of image information from the lens. Typically,
information is gathered over the course of days to months. MOA is using the
microlensing technique to search for planets that orbit at distances of 1 to 5
au from stars in the galaxy's bulge. As of 1998,
about 50 events were being found per year that might be due to such planets.
Those critical events -- anomalies in the intensity of light in the bent beam
-- take place over the course of hours. MOA has also collaborated with
MicroFUN and
PLANET, which are similar groups.

March Of Dimes. Originally created to raise money (in small -- dime --
contributions) for research to end polio. They moved on and found other
causes when a vaccine against polio was invented.

MOD

MODulus. The absolute value of a real number, or the magnitude of some
other mathematical object (complex number or vector).

mod

MODulo. A rigorous definition is useful mostly for those who already
learned it in another context. Basically, modular arithmetic is the arithmetic
of remainders. Hence ``p mod q'' is the remainder on division of p
by q -- 17 mod 10 = 7, 430 mod 3 = 1. When you consider
only integer p and q you get an interesting mathematical structure, the rule of
nines, all that.

modal logic

A formal system of logic that treats possibility explicitly rather than as
an element in propositions themselves. Where traditional logic has the
unary operator not, modal logic incorporates the additional
unary logical operator possibly. If for some proposition A it is
false that possibly not A, then it is easier to say (and one introduces
an operator to say it) that it is true that necessarily A. Cf.
tense logic, described at the PRIOR subentry.
(No, not the prior subentry; just follow the link, okay?)

A personals-ad modifier applied to left-wing and right-wing, meaning either
moderate or extreme. The universal situation is that people tend
to discount as ``fringe'' any viewpoints sufficiently different from their own.
Thus, once one moves sufficiently far to the left or right, one considers the
vast majority of opinion (to one's right or left, resp.), ``fringe.'' I can
hear you thinking: ``that's crazy, you have to be delusional, in denial.''
Yes, and what of it?

With a bit of parochialism and a judicious application of confirmation bias,
the vast majority of people can think of themselves as squarely centrist.
(Alas, as we moderate bien-pensants know too well, only crazy
extremists get elected. They subvert democracy by deceiving the stupid
majority that should be voting as we do. Democracy, you know, is an
absolute good; it's just those damn voters that are the problem.)

In principle, as one drifts way out to the left or right (further if one lives
in Berkeley or Idaho, resp.), it ought to become
increasingly difficult to maintain the illusion that one is comfortably in the
middle of the political spectrum. (I wouldn't know, since I'm a moderate.)

This mathematical issue (approaching a limit from one side --
sup = limsup, as they say) reminds me of religious school. My
earliest these-people-are-imbeciles epiphany (that I can recall) was in fourth
or fifth grade, when the principal came in to teach us a special lesson:

No matter how poor you are, there's always someone poorer.

I suppose the point must have been that if you're starving to death, you can
Thank God that you're not as hungry as someone else who's closer to meeting The
Almighty. One of those there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I things. On its
face, this seems a bit questionable to me. I haven't studied
theodicy, but I think this line of reasoning
should quickly lead George Soros to curse his
luck/stars/deity that he doesn't have Bill Gates's kind of money.

But set that aside. The brilliance of the always-someone-poorer claim is that
it seals up a leak in the argument over on the low end of the socio-economic
status variable: it makes Schadenfreude, or relative-satisfaction, or whatever,
available to every last wretched human. The only problem, obvious to a
ten-year-old, is that it can't be true.

modern

A moving target, wouldn't you say?

modern era

There are many definitions, but a popular one is since 1500, or
about since Columbus reached America. In other words, the era of modern
history since the time that powerful new European nation-states with strong
economies (first mercantilist, then capitalist) and advanced technologies
began a broad program of imperialism that dramatically changed the face of
the world. You could argue that the Portuguese got the ball rolling earlier,
or that the picture is clouded by Ottoman power in Eastern Europe, or how
the Zeitgeist changed, etc., etc., but it's useful to have established names
for things, even -- or especially -- when you're going to argue about them,
so say since 1500. Cf.modern times.

modernism

The literary response to modernity, mostly
since the failed revolutions of 1848. Literature characterized by grumpiness,
resentment, and arrogance. It features contempt of the author for his
characters, focus of attention on artistic activity rather than focus of
artistic activity on more interesting objects of attention -- a self-absorption
carried to the extreme of solipsism. Few modernist masterpieces are studied in
secondary school, because they are literary poison. Even fewer modernist
masterpieces are studied in secondary school because they are literary poison.

Postmodernism is the transfer of all that heavy modernism baggage into
literary criticism.

modernity

The social phenomena associated with industrialization and capitalism,
occurring in modern times. Principal among
these, the displacement of status by class (in the restricted sociological senses of those two words). That
is, a movement from a social hierarchy based on birth and standing within
public (religious, governmental) organizations and towards a hierarchy based
primarily on wealth, and associated with greater social mobility. In the
earlier hierarchies, wealth tended to be based on the rents from ownership of
land and chattel (cattle, slaves, vassals ... speaking broadly here). In the
hierarchies of modern times, wealth was more fluid -- in the form of money and
transferable goods -- and resulted from commerce and industrial production.

In the US and England, the elites of status and class merged to a substantial
degree through intermarriage and shifts of occupation, as high-status and
upper-class groups each sought what the other had. In the US, this transition
used the Episcopal church as a kind of vehicle or token. Late in the
nineteenth century, Episcopal church membership in America grew by a factor of
three and Episcopalians became for many decades the richest (per capita)
denomination in the US. Henry VIII triumphed where George III was defeated.
In England, of course, Anglicanism is the established church and church
membership did not play the same role. In fact, today polls indicate that
half of Britons regard themselves as Anglicans, but actual membership in the
Anglican church is around three million (in a country of what, fifty million?).
The US is a religious country to a degree that Europeans can hardly imagine.
In a typical week, more than half the population of the US attends church.

Oh well, back to modernity. Most liberation and enfranchisement movements,
and unionism, of course, are associated with modernity.

The industrial revolution began in England, and proceeded perhaps most smoothly
there as a result. On the continent, industrialization began later, was more
sudden, and was associated with various worker uprisings. Almost every
European monarchy outside England was toppled by the end of WWI. (The Spanish and Greek
monarchies were reëstablished by later conservative regimes.)

I haven't like, checked any references recently, so caveat lector.

modern love stories

In 1995, the Australian immigration office refused to grant permanent
residency status to a resident of Buffalo, who the previous year had married
an Australian she met on the Internet. Apparently guided by the Australian
Department of Health, the immigration office requires her to lose 24 pounds
before the couple can live happily together in Brisbane. I wonder if they've
given any of those heavy weight-lifting Olympians a hard time in 2000.

Here are the lyrics
to David Bowie's Modern Love, from a site in Australia. David Bowie is
on the thin side.

The era of advanced industrialization -- hence occurring at slightly
different times in different places. Since the term refers primarily to the
time of certain social transformations and upheavals as they occurred in
Europe and North America, however, it is more or less the nineteenth century
or the Victorian era, and some indeterminate interval since then, possibly
reaching into the present.

Charlie Chaplin's movie
Modern Times (1936) is the
definitive statement on Modern Times. If you have not seen this hilarious yet
touching movie, you are culturally destitute.

MODFET

Modulation-doped FET. American-proposed name
for HEMT (q.v.; still used but less common
than ``HEMT'').

modified limited hangout

Soft obstruction of justice, a fall-back position when complete
stonewall defenses are breached; a stage in the process of graceless
resignation.

MODerationS. An Oxford classics exam explained at the
Greats entry. (I don't explain the origin of the
name there. I'm not being coy, I just don't know it. Okay -- fail me! FAIL
ME if you want!! I'm sick of studying.)

MODSIT

MODular Smell Identification Test. A standard twelve-item test.

modus vivendi

Latin, `way of living.'

MOE, MoE

Margin Of Error. The inverse square root of the sample size. Hence, with
a sample of 1000, the MOE is 0.03162 or 3.162%. That's the origin of the
famous ``3% margin of error.''

This figure of merit was created as a shorthand way of indicating the
reliability of polling results to a statistically unsophisticated audience.
It does have some basis in a more rigorous statistical analysis.

I will explain that later, but briefly for now: if the percentage you're trying
to determine by poll is around 50%, then the margin of error is about equal to
two standard deviations. Nineteen times out of twenty, the sample (actual
polled) results will come within two standard deviations (the MOE, in this
case) of the real (``universe,'' sample of the whole) percentage.

More generally, if the fraction you're trying to measure is p, where p is not
necessarily 0.5, then the margin of error is larger than two standard
deviations, and overestimates the chances that the measured result will
be wrong. Instead, two standard deviations are smaller than MOE by a factor of
the square root of 4p(1-p). (Notice that for p=0.5, the correction factor is
unity.) So if the number you're trying to measure is 0.01, and your poll
samples 1000, then 2 S.D. equals about 0.0063. These numbers describe a
rather skewed binomial distribution that is not too well approximated by a
Gaussian. Roughly speaking, though: if, say, an unbiased poll finds that
exactly 1% of respondents (ten of 1000) support a candidate, then the chances
that the real support is 1.5% or higher are rather poor.

Two important issues I really ought to come back to: sources of bias and the
fact that the S.D. estimate is really an estimate of an estimate.

MOE

Measure[s] Of Effectiveness.

MOEA

Ministry Of Economic Affairs. The Government of Taiwan has one as well as
a Ministry of Finance.

MOEM

Micro-Opto-Electro-Mechanical (systems).

MOEMS

Micro-Opto-Electro-Mechanical System[s]. More at the plain old MEMS entry.

MOF

Microstructured Optical Fiber.

MOF

Ministry Of Finance of Japan. Sort of like the
Department of the Treasury, House Ways and Means Committee and the Federal
Reserve Bank all rolled into one, and anyone with any fear of the electorate
locked out.

Bulk mechanical stress is described locally by a symmetric 3x3 tensor.
(Pressure is the trace of this tensor, but you don't need to know that right
now.) It is convenient to represent the six independent components of the
stress tensor by a six-component vector. Stress is related, in the first
place, to strain. (Remember:
stress is a generalized force, strain is a generalized displacement.) For more
on strain in the psychotherapeutic context, see the shoulds entry.

You know, one day I may get serious about this entry, but it will probably be
too late for you.

Mohs's Hardness Scale

There is an empirical law that the ability to scratch is not symmetric.
That is, if an edge or point of one material can make a scratch in the
surface of another, then a point or edge of the second material cannot
scratch the first. It is also true to a good approximation that given any
two materials, one can scratch the other. (We will not examine the question
of whether a material can scratch itself. If this is a problem for you, just
use one of those long-handled things.) These rules should evidently apply best
to homogeneous materials that are close to isotropic in their properties, so
they don't have a ``softer'' side, but they have been applied with consistent
success to crystalline materials.

To the extent that the above empirical rules hold, they imply the existence
of a hierarchy or ordering of materials, from soft to hard. Friedrich Mohs
invented a scale that numbers points along that ordering. Later the scale
was ``extended.'' In the table below, we list some materials and their
hardness numbers on the old and new scales.

Eric
offers a mnemonic. Another is ``The Geologist Can Find An Ordinary
Quartz -- Tourists Call Diamond.'' Yet another is ``Terrible Giants Can Find
Alligators Or Quaint Tigers Conveniently Digestible.'' I suppose you could
mix-and-match: mnemonic, whatever they call
that game.

I should probably warn you ahead of time that this entry is just a
pointless vent, and of no conceivable use to you.

The main computer cluster at FitzPatrick Hall has four rooms that were
traditionally dedicated to Unix boxes. These were known as the philosophers',
composers', artists', and writers' rooms, and the machines in the rooms have
been named accordingly. Thus, starting from the northeast corner (in the
philosophers' room -- the smallest) and going along the north wall, the first
four machines were named aquinas, aristotle, augustine, and averroes. (Well,
it's a Catholic school.) It was a sensible mnemonic scheme. The names weren't
always written on the machines, but if you were on a nearby machine you could
guess or remember its name from the hint of its relative location and from your
own deeply integrated knowledge of the alphabet. This was convenient for
networking and almost essential for reporting a sick machine.

One Summer some years ago, some officious geniuses came over from
IT and replaced the old generation of workstations
with a new one. They preserved all the old machine names in each room, but the
exotic little subtlety of their being in alphabetical order was overlooked.
After a few more years and another generation of machines, it occurred to
someone to do something about the situation, or perhaps it just took that long
to work its way through channels and so forth. I guess it would have been too
much to hope that the names would be unscrambled. I suppose they reasoned that
lugging and interchanging all those identical machines would be too difficult.
(``Rename the machines,'' you say? I'm sure that requires a hardware upgrade.)

Instead, a work-study was detailed to go around and log in to each machine in
turn and find out the machine name and to print out a label on a label printer,
and apply said label to each machine in an appropriate way. This was a good
and admirable thing, and could have been handy even in the good old days. A
few days later he was detailed to do it again, but this time using labels that
didn't peel off on their own. So for a while there, the improvements were
coming fast on each others' heels.

There the situation has sat for a few years. Today I happened to walk into the
composers' room and log in to a free machine. So here I am sitting between
schubert and berlin (hey -- ``White Christmas''!) at a machine with the
unfamiliar name of mohler. Pursuing my suspicion, I checked around and
confirmed that in a room that has space to honor such relatively dim lights
as Bernstein and Foster, there is no machine named in honor of Gustav Mahler.
Now, I haven't been in here often enough to be sure, but it seems to me that
there used to be a machine named mahler, and I think I know what happened to
it.

So to summarize: first the machines had to receive labels because it was too
hard to rename the machines, as if assigning aliases is something you only do
once, like infant baptism. Then, when it was the turn of a new generation of
machines to be baptized, the name of a famous composer was misread and
became attached to one of the machines. Finally, when the last generation of
machines was installed, the names on the printed labels took precedence over
any electronic listing of machines. Progress marches on.

MOI

Main d'oeuvre immigrée. A
French phrase meaning `immigrant manpower,' and
the title of the immigrant section of the French Communist Party
(PCF) in the 1930's and of the
FTP after that was formed.

MOI

Mars Orbital Insertion. ``Men are from Mars.''

moi

`Me' in French. Pronounced ``mwah.'' Yes,
that does sort of suggest an unhealthily high degree of amour-propre.

In French, the predicate of the copula is universally accepted to be in the
oblique case. That is, expressions parallel to ``it is I'' are not
over-correct, they're just wrong. Hence Louis XIV's famous ``L'état
c'est moi.'' (`The state [France] is me.')

mojo

Cocaine or heroine, according to this extensive list of drug slang.
I thought it was marijuana. This could lead to some serious overdosing --
a bad trip, one-way to the morgue. No wonder they color-code the stuff.

There was a case in Georgia (GA) a number
of years ago where a state trooper mistook a bag of oregano for marijuana.

mojo

Magic, or voodoo or hoodoo, and related specific meanings. See a more
careful online definition
from Merriam-Webster. A West African origin has been suggested in such
words as Gullah moco. In Spanish,
moco means `snot.' Like you really needed to know. In many
Spanish-speaking countries, mocoso is slang for tike.

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged
Me (1999), the second juvenile movie in a series starring Mike Meyers,
uses mojo to refer either to his libido or his attractiveness to women, or
maybe that's the same thing, which Dr. Evil uses a time machine to go back
to 1969 to steal from him, but which he somehow manages not to miss until
recently.

Spanish, `I wet.' Can be used reflexively,
but me mojo means both `I get myself wet' and `I wet myself.' None of
this has anything to do with Mrs. Thatcher's notion of a
wet. She was known as the Iron Lady; she didn't
want to get rusty.

(Me mojó means `[he, she, or it] got me wet.')

Of course, in all common dialects of Spanish, ``j'' has an aitch sound.

Mojon

The family name of father and son chemists. Benito, the father (born
1732), was an apothecary at the college at Alcala before moving to Genoa. An
apothecary is what we call a pharmacist today, and what in Britain is still
widely called a chemist. There must be something to that; Benito Mojon became
a professor of chemistry at the University of Genoa, and his son Giuseppe (1772
or 1773-1837) succeeded him. The son eventually rose to become president of
the faculty there. Giuseppe Mojon was known for his experiments in ``medical
electricity.'' He wrote a chemistry textbook that became a popular standard in
its time and went through four editions.

This surname is very different from the word mojón, which means
`[bed] wetter.'

Mojo Risin, Mr.

A lyric used mantra-like in a Doors song (``LA Woman''). An anagram of band
leader Jim Morrison's name. This was absolutely not an allusion to any
other sense of the word mojo. Rock music is
completely free of irony, intentional or otherwise (see, for example, the deconstruction entry). I don't know how
Mojo Nixon (videMotorist) came by his
moniker -- probably it's a tribute to President Nixon (RMN), who inspired a number of rock songs, such as David Bowie's Young
Americans (1975). Who knows? I don't. Probably someone does. Move
on.

Speaking of names -- Paul Revere, of Paul Revere and the Raiders, got his name
on his original birth certificate. Paul Revere and the Raiders did a cover of
``Louie, Louie'' in 1963, around the same time, and in the same studio, as the
Kingsmen did their cover. It became a monster hit on a slow fuse for the Kingsmen. They didn't know
the lyrics exactly, so they winged it; some people started to suspect that it
was subversive. Eventually, the Kingsmen testified before a Congressional
committee. You wonder if a band named after a Revolutionary War hero would
have come under suspicion in similar circumstances. Maybe. The
FBI concluded that the Kingsmen's recording, played
forwards or backwards at any speed, was incomprehensible.

The song was originally written and recorded by Richard Berry in 1956, and it
was a local (i.e., Seattle area) favorite for a while. (This was back in the
days when there was such a thing as regional programming.) The song is the
story of a lovesick sailor telling his bartender (Louie) how much he misses his
girlfriend back home. Home is Jamaica, whose
exotic accent presumably justifies any strange-sounding words or word-like
sounds. For more Jamaica-related linguistic lapses, see the Van Morrison
material discussed under this Cleveland BROWNS
item.

With some dramatic license, the 1978 National Lampoon movie
Animal House was based on the
experiences of Chris
Miller, Dartmouth '62, at the outlaw frat Alpha Delta. One of the
liberties taken was using the Kingsmen's version of this song, which wasn't
released until 1963.

In 1998, the (surviving) Kingsmen won a major suit for unpaid royalties on the
song since 1968. Actually, it was really only a moral victory; if you
check out the details,
I think they still got shafted. The band is still in business (their domain
name is <louielouie.org>),
though over the decades since they were founded (in 1959), there's been a lot
of turnover (listed
here). As of early 2008, they
still have one of the original members, and one from 1963.

Richard Berry's band was called Richard Berry and the
Pharaohs. More famous was Sam the Sham and the
Pharaohs, which had a hit in 1965 with ``Wooly Bully.'' They performed in
turbans and bedsheets.

Museum Of Latin American Art.
``[F]ounded by Dr. Robert Gumbiner in November 1996. It is the only museum in
the Western United States that exclusively features contemporary Latin American
art.''

molectronics

MOLECular eLECTRONICS. Oh, clever. Ugly neologism perpetrated by
DARPA types. It ought to be the apparatus for
electrocuting (for their fur) small velvety-furred insectivorous burrowing
mammals (family Talpidae) found throughout the Northern Hemisphere.
(I didn't want this to be an entirely uninformative entry.)

Mole Day

The day (June 2, or some other day but at 6:02; February 6 in some places)
that high-school chemistry classes explore the mysterious secrets of Avogadro
and that thing on Cindy Crawford's cheek that prevents her from being
attractive. In order to clarify the concept, high school chemistry teachers
since
the dawn of time have used nontraditional learning materials like
songs. Here's one of the least unbearable (to the tune of `Happy
Birthday'):

Happy Mole Day to you,
You live in a zoo.
Your mother's a rodent
Your father's one too.

At this
site you can download a recording of the line ``Your mother was a hamster
and your father smelt of elderberry!'' and other memorable clips from Monty
Python And The Holy Grail. Smelt is a fish, but not in the previous
sentence.

Y'know, I still lose sleep every night wondering if guinea pigs are really
rodents or not. I wish they would settle this pressing question.

Molink

MOscow LINK. The contraction is an informal name for the
(Washington-Moscow) Direct Communication Link. The famous ``Hot Line.''

Motive, Opportunity and Means. The canonical order, with a certain logic,
is ``motive, means, and opportunity.'' MOM is certainly a time-honored basis
of crime investigation, but it is not a principle of law. At least, the
prosecution is never required to offer, let alone demonstrate, a motive. On
the other hand, the absence of a plausible motive normally weakens the
prosecution case.

Aw, momma, can this really be the end? To be
stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues
again!

A thought just occurred to me that there is no conceivable appropriate place to
insert. If this were the appropriate place, then I'd just go right ahead and
comment that in a photograph showing him at a reception at the MOMA in November
2005, Prince Charles looked like Dagwood Bumstead.

A unit of time in medieval reckoning, equal to one fortieth of an hour.
(I reckon that'd be ninety seconds.) Here, for your reading pleasure, are some
examples of use from Byrhtferð's Enchiridion (at II. iii. 108 in the
copy of the Ashmolean)

The word did not survive Old English in this form, at least in old England;
it became moment in Middle English, and sometime early in the
seventeenth century that form ceased to refer to a precise interval. Also in
that century the word momentum was reborrowed from
Latin and used primarily in technical senses related
to mathematics and physics. You could say momentum regained momentum
then, but I wouldn't perpetrate such a vile pun.

The momentum or moment was also defined in medieval times (had to say that) as
one tenth of a point, and the point as a quarter of an hour... usually.
Sometimes the point was a fifth of an hour. A fifth of an hour would have been
two minutes. The whole melange, according to the most common definitions:

1 hour = 4 points = 10 minutes = 15 degrees or parts = 40 moments

Notice that there were 360 degrees in a day. I hadn't realized that England
got that hot.

Mo-Mo, mo-mo

MOnoamniotic MOnochorionic. The amnion and the chorion are, respectively,
the innermost and outermost membranous sacs enclosing the embryo in higher
vertebrates. (That includes mammals, reptiles, and birds, and I suppose
dinosaurs as well -- what could be higher?) Pretty much by definition then,
monoamniotic twins are mo-mo twins.

Fetuses that develop from separately fertilized eggs always have separate
chorions (are dichorionic, in the case of twins). So fraternal and
half-identical twins are never monochorionic, let alone monoamniotic. The
incidence of monochorionic or monoamniotic twins depends on when the original
single zygote splits. Generally, earlier is better. In about a third of
identical-twin pregnancies, splitting occurs within the first 3 days following
fertilization; in these cases the twins are usually dichorionic. In the
majority of cases, splitting occurs between 4 and 8 days; at this stage,
splitting produces monochorionic twins that are nevertheless diamniotic. That
is, each fetus has its own amnion (more commonly called amniotic sac). If
splitting occurs more than 8 days after fertilization, the twins typically
share a single amnion (why should I be common?), and this is a bad thing for
them, or at least for one of them. If splitting occurs after 12 days, then
there is a high risk of conjoined twins.

Monoamniotic twins occur in less than one percent of identical-twin
pregnancies. As twin ``diagnosis'' occurs increasingly early, and as the
membrane normally separating two fetuses is hard to image early, there is an
increasing number of needlessly worried expectant parents.
<Monoamniotic.org> is a
support group for parents diagnosed with monoamniotic twins and for parents of
monoamniotic twins.
Their experience
is that 40% of couples who find their group eventually (sometimes as late as
the 24th week of pregnancy) learn that they were misdiagnosed.

Momos

A Greek god (name more carefully transliterated as Mômos)
whose name is related to the noun momphê,
`blame, censure.' According to Hesiod, he was the son of Nyx (`Night').
Those Greeks had the whole spectrum of human and divine behaviors scoped out.
Momos was the paradigmatic carping jerk, and stories about him typically ended
in his being banished. He is better know today as ... no wait -- let me lie,
and say he is better known by the Latin form of his
name: Momus. (This was once apparently true, but I don't think he's
well-known today by any ancient name.)

MOMspider

Multi-Owner
Maintenance SPIDER. A ``web-roaming robot that specializes in the
maintenance of distributed hypertext infostructures (i.e. wide-area webs).
The program is written in Perl and, once customized for your site, should
work on any Unix-based system with Perl 4.036.''

MoMuC

MObile MUltimedia Communication. Abbreviation also used for an
international workshop.

MONongahela. A river that runs north and joins the Allegheny River to form
the Ohio River at Pittsburgh. [It had been my understanding, evidently
incorrect, that rivers were named like alkanes, with the longest possible
extension (of water, in this case) having a common name and the branches off of
this having their separate names (presumably named according to the same
principle). That's the reason that the Mississippi-Missouri is said to be
misnamed, and that the length of ``the Nile'' is the distance along the Nile
and the White Nile combined. In fact, the Iroquois regarded the Allegheny and
Ohio as one river.]

A mountain or high hill in the middle of otherwise generally level terrain.
The word looks like it ought have something to do with the Greek root
mono- (for `one'), but it doesn't. The word is an
antonomasia of
Mount Monadnock, a
mountain located mostly within the town of
Jaffrey, in
southwestern New Hampshire. The name of that mountain is of American Indian
origin.

At length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging
along with the White Whale's flank, he seemed strangely
oblivious of its advance---as the whale sometimes will---and
Ahab was fairly within the smoky mountain mist, which,
thrown off from the whale's spout, curled round his great,
Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when, with
body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the
poise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the
hated whale.

From this sentence, or a bit of it, or from the Mount Monadnock link above, you
might infer that Mount Monadnock does not rise very abruptly. This is in fact
correct, so the mountain is popular for hiking rather than mountain-climbing.
Among the hikers who have climbed it are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David
Thoreau and Rudyard Kipling. In 1845 Emerson wrote a very long rhyme about it
entitled ``Monadnoc.'' Here's a typical example of that dross:

Monadnoc is a mountain strong,
Tall and good my kind among;
But well I know, no mountain can,
Zion or Meru, measure with man.

I wish I could add something here about Leibniz.

A synonym of monadnock is inselberg, which is a German compound meaning
`island mountain.' In German the word is spelled with a capital I, not because
it's a proper noun but because it's a noun.

Monday Holidays

I'm not sure exactly when the practice began, but I guess it was a Monday.

mondegreen

A misheard lyric. The term was coined by Sylvia Wright in a November 1954
Harper's Magazine article (that'd be vol. 209, no. 1254, pp.
48-51) entitled ``The Death of Lady Mondegreen.'' She explained that when she
was a child, her mother would read to her from Percy's Reliques, and one
of her favorite poems was the one she remembered beginning

This was, as she learned years later, the Scottish ballad ``The Bonny Earl of
Murray'' and the last line is supposed to go

and laid 'im on the green.

Rock music has been a great boon for mondegreens, but religious and patriotic
stuff taught to children is a great traditional source. In the 90's, the
San Francisco Chronicle's Jon Carroll devoted a score of his Daily
Datebook columns to mondegreens (first mondegreen column: April 23, 1990,
p. F10).

A search on the web will turn up a couple of widely repeated improbabilities.

Claim: Sylvia Wright published an article on mondegreens in the
Atlantic Monthly, in 1954 or
in the 1950's.

Test: I personally checked the author indices of all the bound volumes
of Atlantic Monthly for the years 1941 to 1966. I found only one
article under the name Sylvia Wright, entitled ``Chowder Is Out!''
It was published in the November 1957 Atlantic, pp. 255-256. It is an
extended protest against The
Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, by Fannie Merritt Farmer.
This seems to have been a life-long obsession of hers (vide
infra).

The Atlantic and Harper's are similar
magazines, easily confused. I imagine
that someone remembered that Wright's article appeared in 1954 but
misremembered the journal, and that this error was the origin of the
claim. Afterwards, the error was propagated faithfully by the
internet. Indeed, this very august glossary that you are reading was
one of the mistaken propagaters of this claim until early June 2001.

Claim: Sylvia Wright published two or more articles on mondegreens in
the 1950's.

Test: I personally checked the Reader's Guide to Periodical
Literature for January 1929 to February 1981 (vols. 8-40).
(I skipped the book review listings when they began to be a separate
section; I ignored Sylvia Hart Wright, a writer on architectural
and civil engineering matters.)
The first publication listed under the name Sylvia Wright was a
piece that appeared in Harper's Magazine in December 1952 (pp.
29-32), ``Get Away From Me With Those Christmas Gifts.'' That
piece was excerpted in Vogue (June 1956, pp. 84-5). The last
item I found was in the March 1975 Harper's, a letter on
pp. 6-7, in the ``Wraparound.'' In that letter she recalls that
many years previous she had published in Harper's an article
called ``How to Make Chicken Liver Pâté Once.'' She
mentions Fannie Farmer's cookbook. A note after the letter says

Sylvia Wright is now at work on a book about the island of Chios.

It's possible she published on mondegreens in a magazine not indexed
by the Reader's Guide, though I doubt it.

For more investigative etymological reporting, see the Pakistan entry.

Monegasque, Monegasquan

Of, from, or pertaining to Monaco. It's surprising that it hasn't come to
mean ``pertaining to bed-hopping
Eurotrash.''

MONOnucleosis. Called the ``kissing disease'' because of the folkloric
belief that it is transmitted that way. The folkloric belief is correct.
(Any saliva transfer will do, on toys for example. Blood transfusion can also
do it.)
Knocks you out with weariness for up to a month, but YMMV. Great disease to make you feel worthless. A
couple of days after the prodromic period of malaise and fatigue, the fever
begins. Various things distend: ``glands'' (lymph nodes), tonsils and pharynx,
spleen (~50% incidence).

Mono is caused by Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) after an
incubation period of 15-50 days.
Most people have been infected by the time they're 40, but only a minority
develop the disease. It's thought of as a disease of young adults because
the symptoms in infants and children are milder.
In any case the diagnosis is difficult, so mild cases can be mistaken for a
common cold. If you're planning to get
sick, don't just jump into any disease. You should at least consider coming
down with an outer-ear infection.

monoculous

One-eyed. You can't imagine what a triumph it is to discover this word.
Speakers of Spanish who regularly use English
frequently ask each other what the English word for tuerto is. Now I
have two terms that don't quite fit the bill, instead of one.

Tuerto is the Spanish word with the meaning `able to see with one eye
only.' That is, either blind in one eye or with one of two eyes put out. It's
not exactly the same thing as one-eyed, since a Cyclops is one-eyed but not
tuerto. Apart from the semantic misalignment however, another
difference is that tuerto is an honest-to-God word and a perfectly
common one, whereas one-eyed is a compound, forever consigned to the
indignity of a hyphen by the silent e of one.

monokini

A topless bathing suit introduced by designer Rudi Gernreich in 1964. The name uses the Greek
prefix mono- (`single, one') in a play on the word
bikini (in which bi sounds like, though it
is not, the Latin prefix for `double, two').

monolingual

Having one tongue. That is, capable of being deceived by forked tongues
speaking in only one tongue.

P.J. O'Rourke seems to agree with this view. In an article (``My E.U. Vacation: What I learned reading the European
constitution on a French beach in the Caribbean'')
that appeared in the Weekly Standard (June 3, 2005), he wrote

Actually, I claim that there's a tremendous journalistic advantage to covering
politics when you can't speak the language. You aren't misled into reporting
what people say; you're forced to report the inexorable truth of what people
do.

monosyllabic

In the New York Times Magazine for December 1, 1996, accompanying an
interview of 1996 Literature Nobelist Wislawa Szymborska, is the first
appearance in English translation of

The Three Oddest Words (1996)

When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold.

Heterologicality is a linguistic
phenomenon. Critical acclaim is a social phenomenon.

Sorry. Perhaps you were thinking of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay
(.uy).

Montezuma's revenge

Really stuck it to the Habsburgs. Maximillian, younger brother of
Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Josef, reigned as Emperor of Mexico from 1864
until 1867, when he was executed by a firing squad in Mexico. Franz Josef's
other brother, Archduke Karl Ludwig, died in 1896 from some illness contracted
from bad water he drank while on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. For more on
the travails of Franz Josef, see the nomen-est-omen subentry for Gavrilo Princip.

MUD, Object-Oriented.
Name is applied both to a programming language for creating MUD's (that is,
for creating a game of rooms, exits, objects, etc.) and to the resulting
game itself. MOO's allow for real-time conferencing in an environment in
which you can move around, manipulate objects, and communicate with other
users in various ways.

Clement Clarke Moore was a prominent Protestant theologian in the early
nineteenth century, a rich farmer in midtown Manhattan, and author of the
leading Hebrew dictionary of his day.

In 1822, he turned his writing skills to a short poem for the information
of his children. In this work, entitled ``A Visit From Saint Nicholas,''
Moore established most of the few facts we know with any accuracy about
this annual phenomenon. For example, he fixed the date of the visit as the
eve of Christmas, rather than Dec. 5, the eve of Saint Nicholas's Day.
His 28 rhyming couplets, the first beginning

'Twas the night before Christmas

did not include footnotes, but his report has generally been regarded as
authoritative.

It must have achieved a samizdat vogue; it was already considered a classic
in 1860, when the report was reprinted in the journal Harper's Weekly,
with new graphics by the journalist Thomas Nast. Thomas Nast is best known
today for his zoological work, preparing
illustrations of Equus asinus Democraticus and Elephas Republicanus
(g.o.p.) beginning in 1874. It was Nast who established that Saint
Nicholas was pathologically obese, but the
chimney-passage question was not immediately reexamined. Nevertheless, it
may be noted that only a few decades later, tunneling by bare and dressed
particles became a widely accepted violation of classical physical law.

I haven't had a chance to update the entry (I don't have Santa's superluminal freight sled; I'm slow), but I
figured I ought to at least mention this: In October 2000, Vassar English
professor Don Foster brought forward substantial evidence that Moore was a
plagiarist: that he fraudulently claimed authorship of this poem, and that it
was probably the work of Henry Livingstone.

Moore's Law

The observation by Gordon E. Moore, in 1964, that the number of transistors
on a chip was increasing by a factor of two per year. He made this
observation only six years after the first integrated circuits were
produced. (In 1968, Moore cofounded Intel with the late Bob Noyce.)
Since the late 1970's, the doubling time has been about 18 mos.

Any similar law of exponential improvement in semiconductor engineering
is also often called a Moore's Law. (See, however, Grove's Law.) Recently, Moore pronounced a
second law: that every generation of microprocessor requires a fab (fabrication
facility) that costs twice as much as the previous. As of 1996, a new
fab cost around a billion US$. Cf.
Joy's Law and Rent's Rule.

Massive Ordnance Penetrator. In profile, it looks like a wood nail with
winglets, but it's larger. It weighs 13,600 kilos and can destroy 25% of its
targets in bunkers buried beneath 60 meters of reinforced concrete, a depth
greater than any other bomb of its type.

MOP

Measure[s] Of Performance.

MOP

Ministry Of Planning. On second thought, make that the ``Ministry of
Planning and Development.'' Uh... have we gone to press yet? No? Okay then,
make that ``Ministry of Planning, Development, Environment & Housing.''

mop

Your own natural hair, and plenty of it. A rug is not your own natural
hair, and plenty of it. You don't apply a rug to a mop, any more than you
apply a mop to a rug.

Unanswerable questions still surface at parties.
``What kind of novels do you write?''
Legendary. Seminal. Filthy.
``Should I know your name?''
To which I usually reply, eyes modestly lowered, ``Not
necessarily,'' but riding sufficient scotch, I become equally capable of a
bellicose ``Yes, if you're literate,'' after which my wife usually points out
it is time to go home.

I'm not sure what conclusion one is supposed to draw from this, the beginning
of Broadsides (1990), but I figured I'd put the entry in just in case.
(There might be an exemption if you happen not to be Canadian.)

Richler (1931-2001) was at first probably best known for The Apprenticeship
of Duddy Kravitz, which is basically Portnoy's Complaint without the
masturbation. (And with no mother instead of a domineering one. Well, maybe
it's not a very accurate description, but it sounds cool to say.) Eventually
Richler became more of a celebrity writer, known for nothing in particular
except being a moderately well-known author. He wrote some other novels, but
really, who's got the time? He wrote amusing essays and
magazine pieces, and these were repackaged as
tomes from time to time. You know how Gary worries that anything he says in my
hearing may be used against him in the glossary? (Sure you do -- I mentioned
it back at the conversation entry.
BTW, Gary is an actual real person, but there's no
point in worrying -- I can invent.) Well, Richler was that kind of writer to
be wary of.

more honored in the breach

This phrase is used to mean that a law, rule, vel sim. is widely
ignored. What is really widely ignored, however, is the original meaning of
the phrase. The original phrase, as uttered by the character of Hamlet, meant
that the laws in question (imposed by his uncle and stepfather the King) were
such that there was greater honor in disobeying than obeying them.

more honored in the breech

This phrase is used to mean that a law, rule, vel sim. is widely
ignored. However, it's a misspelling of more honored in the breach
(q.v.). As written, ``more honored in the breech'' means `highly respected in the buttocks,' or
callipygian. Okay, okay, that's not exactly equivalent -- callipygian
means `having beautiful [beautifully proportioned] buttocks.'
It comes from the Ancient Greek word kallipugos having the
same meaning -- pugê meant buttocks, and kalli- was a
productive root meaning beautiful. A very productive root. Among attested
uses were words for having or being beautiful(ly)

I heard this expression today in an advertisement: ``Acme's, [let's say]
fertilizer grows more [grass] when compared with competitors' products.'' This
is precisely the kind of expression that makes one think ``manure!'' Yet it is
also common in student papers. In both cases there is usually some evidence
that the author has a minimal command of English, um, at least. This is
relevant because it implies that the author is aware of the more-than
construction.

So clearly, ``Acme grows more grass than'' (vel sim.) is not the
intended meaning, and is probably false. In fact, Acme is probably the worst.
(If it weren't, they'd compare it to the worst product and say ``comparison
studies with a popular alternative [spotted hyena chips] show Acme grows grass
faster than the competition.'') When one considers, however, that comparison
cannot take place without observation, the meaning becomes clear to anyone
familiar with quantum physics or child psychology: the ``more'' outcome depends
not only on the conditions of observation, but on the very fact of observation.
It's a Copenhagen construction. If Acme fertilizer is placed in competition
with an alternative manure, the grass will grow -- or at least a measurement of
its height will appear to show that it grows -- faster. Not faster than the
competition, just faster than it would without competition -- if it weren't
being observed. You could deny that, but you could never prove you were right.
If you want to maximize the effect, you should intensify the competition -- add
motivation, so to speak -- by using the competing product directly in the soil
where you are testing Acme. Boy, will you be impressed!

Morgenlande, Morgenländer

German, literally `morning lands,' an obsolete German term for the
obsolescent English term `the Orient' in the latter term's former (i.e.,
obsolete) sense. Confused? See the AbhKM entry
for more confusion!

Wilhelm II, the last Kaiser of Germany (abdicated
1918), held a high opinion of his own opinion, and liked to give avuncular
advice to his cousin Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia (executed in secrecy
1918). In 1895, astonished by the Japanese victory
over China, Kaiser Willi began to warn his cousin and Europe of the rising
power of the Rising Sun. He coined the term Gelbe Gefahr, `Yellow
Peril,' to describe the threat (he had a cartoon executed to illustrate his
brainstorm).

Japan's victory was over another Asian country -- far larger, of course, but
known from recent European and American experience to be militarily backward.
With the prevalent racist and cultural prejudices of the West, the
Sino-Japanese events were ignored, and the Orient continued to be thought of as
backward and as no military match for any Western power. Few realized the
extent of Japan's rapid industrialization after the Meiji Restoration. The Japanese victory over Russia
in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5)
thus came as a shock to Europe.

Not currently discussed anywhere else in this glossary: Abendland, which
means ... oh wait -- I figured out
where it's discussed!

morgue

A newspaper's archive of published stories.

Mori

A common Japanese surname. It's equivalent to
English names like Forest, Grove, and Woods.

Market & Opinion Research
International International. An international group of formal partners of
MORI in over 30 different countries. While the
expansion of MORI appears only fleetingly on the home website of
UK-based MORI, those of its Latin American affiliates
that have MORI in their name are careful to make clear that this is an English
acronym, featuring the expansion prominently on their welcome pages. In Spanish, morí means `I died.' (In the vos conjugation used in Argentina and
Central America, it also means `[I command you to] die.') A widespread
practice in Spanish (though not the official Real Academia standard) is
to omit accents on capital letters.

Look, what I'm trying to say here is that MORI was a poorly researched choice
of name, evidently selected when the company already regarded itself as
international. Making an AAP out of it
does not help.

A crutch for actors who are not Zero Mostel in Ionesco's ``Rhinoceros.''

mortgage

These days, according to my email, I'm qualifying for another new mortgage
every four to six hours. Imagine the tax benefits!

``These days,'' when I first wrote the entry, were just after the turn of the
century. This glossary has some substantive information on mortgages at other
entries. Serious glossary entries for serious times. You can tour these
entries starting at the ARM entry.

Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor. Designates a technology that is based on a miracle of silicon: its oxide is a good insulator
(only a fair dielectric) and is extremely stable protection for silicon. Both
the semiconductor that silicon replaced (germanium) and the one that has been
trying to replace it for years (gallium arsenide) lack such a good ``native
oxide.''

A MOS transistor (MOST) is a kind of
IGFET. Both IGFET and MOST are relatively rare
terms, and one hears ``an MOS'' used for an MOST. This is
equivocal in principle, because there are also MOS
capacitors. If this bothers you, use MOSFET.

MOS

Mit Out Sound. Legend has it that this is what talkies director Erich von
Stroheim said instead of ``without sound'' (i.e., the instruction to
film a take without recording sound). The idea, of course, was that he
couldn't pronounce the English w and that he recognized with as the
English corresponding to German mit. (The resemblance is coincidental,
as with is cognate with the German word wider, and not
mit. The sense development has been quite a ride.) I don't know
anything relevant about von Stroheim, so I'll just use the entry as an
opportunity to take off on tangents.

German-speakers with poor English typically, or at least stereotypically,
pronounce the English w semivowel as a German w consonant (i.e., like
English v) and are understood. In the case of various cognates (world/Welt,
west/West, wish/Wünsch, word/Wort, war/Wehr, was/war, water/wasser, etc.)
this has the pleasant feature of familiarity for the German-speaker, although
in many cases semantic evolution has yielded faux amis (e.g., ``I will''
is cognate with ich will, but the latter still has a meaning close to
`I intend to').

English is unusual among Western European languages. I can stop right there
and it's a true enough sentence, but what I intended to say was that it's
unusual in respect of having words for with and without that are
closely related. Compare Germanic languages like German (mit/ohne)
and Swedish (med/utan) or Romance languages:
com/sem, con/sin, avec/sans, and
con/senza, for examples, in Portuguese,
Spanish, French,
and Italian, resp. With the Romance examples, you get the impression that
maybe there was some earlier language that these
languages have as a common source of their similar words.

Mosaic

The first graphical browser for HTML documents.
It made the New York Times on December 8, 1993.
Originally developed by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at
NCSA. Andreessen created the NCSA Mosaic research
prototype when he was an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, where NCSA is located). When
he went commercial, he tried to cut UIUC in on the action, but the mind-set in
those days was such that the university would have nothing to do with it.
Andreessen and five other former students and staff of the university formed
what became the Netscape Corporation.
UIUC now actively seeks to commercialize the results of university research.

MOS-C

MOS Capacitor. Pronounced both as initials
and as ``moss-cap'' (see next).

MOSCAP

MOS CAPacitor. (Pronounced ``moss-cap.'')
An MOS capacitor is an area of silicon covered by a uniform oxide layer, with
a conducting surface above. The conductor on top was originally some
elemental metal or metal alloy, but it was soon replaced by heavily-doped
polysilicon. In a pinch, any depletion-mode
MOSFET is a MOSCAP. The two leads of the ersatz
capacitor are the gate contact and either the source or drain contact. (Leave
one of the latter, S or D, disconnected, or else short source and drain.)

MOS capacitors have asymmetric Q-V characteristics --
i.e., they have bias-dependent capacitance. In fact, for one sign of
applied voltage they have voltage-dependent capacitance. The asymmetry does
not arise simply because the two ``capacitor plates'' are of different
material. A mica capacitor with different-size plates made of different metals
has a Q-V characteristic that is symmetric (and substantially linear, so the
capacitance C is a constant). The
problem is that doped semiconductor is in some respects not a very good metal.

In order to have a small inter-plate spacing (and hence a decently high
capacitance) the silicon must be doped. For purposes of illustration, let's
say it's doped N: a high density of electron donor impurities like arsenic (As) or phosphorus (with the unfortunately confusing
atomic symbol P). At absolute
zero temperature, these donors create un-ionized (i.e. filled) ``donor
levels'' at energies just below the conduction band (CB). This means that charge neutrality puts the
Fermi energy (the electrochemical potential) close to the CB. At room
temperature, most of the donors are ionized and charge neutrality is maintained
by electrons that can be thought of as promoted from the donors to the CB.
(It's an entropy effect: even though the donors have slightly lower energy,
there are many more states in the conduction band. The characteristic energy
scale over which this effect can manifest is
kBT, 0.026 eV
at room temperature.)

Anyway, getting back to the MOS-C... For
simplicity we'll let the ``metal'' in the gate be a (theoretically
unproblematic) elemental metal. If a positive voltage is applied to the
silicon side of the capacitor, that side of the capacitor charges up with
electrons. These electrons pile up against the insulating oxide that separates
the capacitor plates. (Yeah, yeah, there are some quantum effects; the
electrons don't pile on like geometric points on a geometrically thin oxide
plane.) This polarity gives the highest possible capacitance for the given
capacitor geometry. If the polarity is reversed --
negative voltage on the silicon side -- then the silicon takes a positive
charge. This positive charge is initially produced by depletion of electrons.
That is, the electrons in the conduction band move away from the oxide, and the
remaining positively-ionized donors yield a net positive charge at the plate.
However, the donor ions are not mobile. In order for the positive charge to
increase, the silicon must be depleted further into the bulk away from the
oxide. Thus, as the voltage increases, the effective plate spacing increases,
and the capacitance decreases.

MOSE, MoSE

Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico. Italian,
`experimental electromechanical module.' Given the expansion of the acronym,
it appears the acronym originally refered to an individual floodgate at an
earlier stage in the project development, but MOSE is now used as the name for
a larger project. Given the uncertainties, however, it is still fair to call
the entire project sperimentale. The project is intended to protect
Venice from drowning. The city is built on a hundred mostly small islands (118,
but who's counting?) that lie in a lagoon, and has been subsiding for hundreds
of years. Historically, when a building had subsided too far for habitation or
was at risk of collapse, it was knocked down and a higher structure was built
in its place. That is no longer considered an option. Between the 1930's and
the 1970's, the problem was exacerbated as water was pumped from aquifers
underlying the city. Now was that bright or what?

In the past 100 years, the effective sea level has risen 23 cm. Currently,
despite the end of pumping, it is estimated to be rising at 0.5 mm per year.
The future magnitude of the problem is subject to many uncertainties, among
them the magnitude of sea-level rise expected to be caused by global warming.
Estimates are typically in the range of 20-100 cm by 2050.

The MOSE plan is to install 79 gates (I've also read 78), distributed at the
three inlets to the lagoon that Venice lies in. The hollow gates will
``normally'' be filled with water, and hinged on the seabed, they will lie flat
along the bottom. When floods threaten, air is to be pumped in, so the gates
lighten and float into vertical
position, protecting the city. The project will be expensive, but
fortunately Italy is situated on Euroland, so
it will only cost an estimated 3.5 billion euros
(mere American billions). Just a few years ago,
it would have cost trillions of lire.
Construction began in May 2003; completion is scheduled for 2011.

Despite the reduced price, the project is controversial. It is feared that
frequent closings will disturb the ecosystem in various ways. Also, it seems
that a lot of the ecosystem must consist of bacteria and the less fastidious
sort of fish, processing Venice's sewage, much of which is still untreated.
(The large fraction of Italian sewage that is not treated, and the resulting
ecological problems for the Mediterranean, have been a continuing bone of
contention between Italy and the rest of the EU, except for countries like
Greece that want to keep their head down because they figure they're next.)
Nobody seems concerned that flooding of a subsided Venice might disturb the
ecosystem.

Ecosystem in ``balance.'' Please do not disturb. Don't touch anything.

Estimates of how long MOSE will be effective vary. Supporters offer estimates
of 100 years, opponents say no more than 50. I haven't seen any discussion of
future retrofit ideas. The one alternative seems to be locally raising the
land level underneath existing structures, starting with the lowest-lying,
most immediately threatened areas. This is already being done, apparently by
private owners.

One solution that is not piecemeal is to pump seawater into a broad
600-to-800-meter deep aquifer underlying the area. (A deeper aquifer is
preferred in part because it should lead to a more even rise at the surface.
The layer considered also has convenient clay layers. I am not completely
certain why refilling the aquifers previously pumped for fresh water is not
considered a good option; it seems that uncertainty about uneven uplift is the
main concern.) The aquifer idea is being studied and promoted (yes, the usual
engineering conflict of interest) by a group at the University of Padua as a
supplement, not an alternative, to the MOSE project. Numerical modeling by
Giuseppe Gambolati of U. Padua predicts a 30-cm rise produced within a circle
5 km in radius around Venice, produced by injection of 18 million cubic meters
of water through a ring of twelve vertical wells along the circumference.
For further information on the various projects and proposals, see the pages of
CORILA.

The Republic of Venice was once a great empire, contending with the Ottoman
empire for control of the Aegean, and medieval Venice had a population of a
quarter million. They invented the practice of keeping regular ambassadors in
foreign countries -- sort of the diplomatic equivalent of a standing army.
(Venice was probably also the first place to enforce segregation of Jews in a
ghetto. Oh well-- win some, lose some.) The inconvenience of frequent
inundation has been cited as a cause of population decline in recent decades
(though it's claimed tourism has not declined). The resident
population has subsided to 60,000.

Venezuela was named after Venice (the former word is a diminutive form of the
latter). Alonso de Ojeda gave the area this name after coming upon native
American stilted houses built over Lake Maracaibo. (It is a lake, so
sea-level rise is not a direct concern.)

Subsidence under ancient buildings seems to be a characteristic Italian
problem, but we don't have a entry for the leaning tower of Pisa yet.

Your practical take-away from this entry is this: don't visit Venice in the off
season. St. Mark's Square, one of the city's lowest points, used to flood
about ten times a year back around 1900; now it's flooding about 60 times each
Winter. I guess low tide makes it possible to number the floods. Here's good
news: if it gets much worse, St. Marks will be flooded only one time all
Winter.

MoSex

Self-assigned nickname of the Museum Of SEX, which opened in
NYC in 2002. Admission is $17. That's pretty
stiff, and it gives a whole new meaning to the expression
``RU/18.'' Many of the early museumgoers have
felt screwed, but they don't mean that in a nice way. Or they don't mean that
in a nasty way, or, well, I think you get the picture. There's a serious
question whether this contribution to culture will survive very long. If it
does, it may someday be able to charge $68 or $70.

Zager and Evans had a number-one hit in 1970 with ``In The Year 2525
(Exordium & Terminus).'' They consider ``...the year 2525 / If man is
still alive / If woman can survive / They may find....'' They speculate that
``in the year 6565 / Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife / You'll
pick your son, pick your daughter too / From the bottom of a long glass tube,
wo-oo-wo.''

The last time I checked, we didn't have a ``most average'' entry, so if you
wanted any information about ``most average,'' you were well advised (or would
have been) to go to the typical entry.

Most of my friends describe me as

The same dozen keywords every time!

Having a good sense of humor, but not, you know, ``funny'' in that
other sense.

The traits I think will attract the kind of person I'm looking for
are. Personalsese.

Mosul

Modern name of the city called Nineveh in the Bible. Okay: Nineveh was on
the eastern bank of the Tigris; Mosul is on the opposite side. The modern
Iraqi province (or ``governate'') of which Mosul is the capital is called
Ninawa.

Under the Ottoman Empire, Mesopotamia (al-Iraq in Arabic) was governed
as a federation of three provinces centered on their main cities. The province
of Mosul in the north was mostly Kurdish. The other two cities were Baghdad
(Arab Sunni, rather than Kurdish Sunni) and Basra (Arab Shi'ite). After
WWI and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the
British imposed a highly centralized government, a constitutional monarchy
modeled on their own.

The Motorist's Psalm

I don't care if it rains or freezes --
'long as I got my plastic Jesus
sittin' on the dashboard of my car.

I can do a hundred miles an hour!
Long as I got the almighty power,
Way up there with my pair of fuzzy dice.

Accept no substitutes. Mojo Nixon and others have promulgated
heretical versions, to say nothing of exegeses. Don Imus apparently
used to sign on with riding instead of sittin'; that
might be a translation problem. For other liturgy, visit the drop kick entry.

Motorola

Visit. This industry moves so
fast, this morning's news is really just yesterday's history, so what am
I gonna tell you?

motor unit

The muscle fibers controlled by an individual nerve (between about ten
fibers -- a motor unit for the eyeball -- and hundreds of fibers -- as for
example in the abs). The fibers in a single
motor unit are either all slow twitch or all fast twitch,
because that is determined by the kind of nerve stimulation they get.
Animal experiments have shown that reconnecting a nerve that controlled
slow-twitch muscles to replace one that controlled an initially fast-twitch
motor unit causes the fibers to adapt: more enzymes for metabolizing fat
appear, blood vessel (capillary) density increases, and eventually glycogen
stores and the enzymes needed to process them both decline, and cell wall
composition changes.

motor vehicle

A mechanism for heating brakes. The most efficient vehicles are those
that transfer the largest fraction of generated mechanical energy to the
brakes as heat.

George Westinghouse made his first fortune from the design of air brakes for
trains. He used that fortune to commercialize an AC
power system ultimately based on Tesla's designs. A financial panic ruined him
in 1907.

MOTOS

Member Of The Opposite Sex.

In a television ad that ran, oh, I don't know, probably in the eighties,
selling photographic film or something, an excruciatingly cute little girl
asks her older brother, ``Am I the opposite sex, or are you''?

It would be in poor taste if I were to comment ``out of the mouths of babes.''

Ted Turner was an undergraduate at Brown University. (That's the ``Harvard of
Rhode Island,'' although nobody calls it that. If this comment sounds stupid,
you should read the the
Harvard-of-the-South entry. Then the comment will still sound stupid, but
you'll be better informed. A lot of his business ventures were based in
Atlanta. Atlanta has more Harvards of the South than any other city anywhere.)
Ted Turner was expelled from Brown in 1960 for violating some rule. It had
something to do with having a female friend in his dorm room. In 1990, Brown
awarded him an undergraduate degree after all.

MOV, mov

Metal-Oxide Varistor.

MOV, mov

MOVe. A common mnemonic in assembly languages.

movie

A movie is a sock-puppet show with a more elaborate set. This requires
roles to be performed by entire persons rather than single hands, which
diminishes the expressiveness of the actors.

The greatest movies of the color era are roloc. No, not really, but I wanted
to keep the palindrome going. Actually, the
greatest movies of the color era are the following:

Animal House.
It's a love story. Over the course of the movie, as various subsidiary
love stories evolve, John Blutarsky (John Belushi's first
romantic lead) shows repeatedly that he is devoted to Mandy Pepperidge
(played by Mary Louise Weller) and only to her. Mandy is
model-beautiful (this is literally true of the actress), and is in
an unsatisfying relationship. She is oblivious to ``Bluto,'' even when
he is very close in front of her (and also usually, and symbolically,
below her); he belongs to a group of social outcasts. Although Bluto
has leadership skills that will eventually propel him to the Senate and
(according to the Double Secret Probation release of 2003) the US
Presidency, he is reduced to puerile stunts in her presence. Events
conspire, however... Ironically, Mandy's best friend's selfish
betrayal helps Mandy toward her destiny. I don't want to give too much
away, but the two lovers are happily united in the end. Because the
love story has a happy ending (in contrast with ``The Tragedy of Romeo
and Juliet,'' say, which also has some funny bits) it is classed as a
``comedy.'' It's also an homage to courtly love.

The Ballad of
Narayama. It's a comedy about euthanasia, and it's about
youth in Asia! But most of the gags are not puns, which wouldn't
translate very well between Japanese and other languages. (See,
though, mama-haha.) Instead,
they have to do with things we can all relate to like sex, very bad
body odor, tooth decay, and burying alive a
family that hunger has reduced to potato-robbing.

Metal-Oxide Varistor. Common transient voltage surge suppressor
(TVS) on power outlet strips. The metal is typically
zinc (Zn). The I-V is symmetric.

MOVPE

Metal-Organic Vapor-Phase Epitaxy.
In principle, since the acronym expansion includes epitaxy, this
acronym may be preferred for emphasizing that the deposition is epitaxial,
in contrast with MOCVD (since the deposition
dee of CVD need not be epitaxial).
On the other hand, in all the applications I know of, the whole point of
using metal-organics is to produce epitaxial layers of compound
semiconductors for optical and electronic applications. There's not much
point in going to the trouble of MOCVD otherwise, so basically MOVPE and
MOCVD both mean MOVPE. MOCVD is probably the more common term.

A dhimmi, or perhaps just a Christian dhimmi, in Muslim Spain. Mozarabic
art and literature flourished in the kingdom of León in the 10th and
early 11th centuries. The word is of course a loan from the Spanishmoz&aacutel;rabe. That in turn is
from the Arabic musta'rib. The initial m is the well-known active
participle marker (cf. Muslim/Islam). Based on ista'raba, `to
become an Arab,' the participle musta'rib could be understood to mean
`someone who adopts Arab customs.' It was also understood -- by self-regarding
Arabs -- as something like `Arab wannabe.'

Mozilla

The original project code name for
Netscape Navigator. Since early 1998, when Netscape released the source
code for free, Mozilla.com has been the
coordinating site for development of this now oddly open standard.
If you want to see how your pages look on older Netscape clients that
visitors may use to browse your pages, you'll want to know that old versions
of the browser are archived at this
site.

A lot of developers were irritated that when Microsoft came out with its
browser, that browser self-identified as ``Mozilla'' in requests, even though
it follows slightly different conventions (``MSIE'' is given as part of the
version information). Presumably this was done so the browser would have
the greatest chance of being identified by the server as a graphical browser.
Of course, it had the side effect that developers unwilling to work too hard
would end up selecting a single set of browser-dependent extensions for all
graphical browsers. Some feel this is naughty.

MP

Northern Mariana Islands. USPS abbreviation.
I don't get it: NM, MI,
MA, MN, and MS were taken, but what about ML?
Anyway, don't try to convert a street address into a mailing address,
firstly because the post office doesn't deliver, and secondly because
there probably isn't a street address, which is why the post office
doesn't deliver in the first place. You mail to a PO box.

The Northern Marianas used to be (1947-1978) a trust territory (assigned to US
trusteeship by the UN), but since then it's been a US
commonwealth (the CNMI, ``a self-governing
commonwealth in political union with the United States''), and the
trusteeship was formally dissolved in 1990. Since 1986 (on the eve of Guy
Fawkes Day, FWIW in a largely Roman Catholic
island), the residents have been US citizens.

Melting Point. For pure substances, this is the same as the freezing
point, q.v.

MP

Member of Parliament. The plural
(Members of Parliament) is abbreviated MP's, and not M'sP. This seems
natural, but it indicates something of the nature of the acronym in
language: productive suffixes can be applied to the acronym without
information about its original expansion, so it exists independently.
Cf.PO'ed.

MP, µP

MicroProcessor.

MP

MilePost. An efficient abbreviation for those digital traffic-warning
signs.

Magazine Publishers of America.
``[T]he industry association for consumer magazines. Established in 1919, the
MPA represents more than 240 domestic publishing companies with approximately
1,400 titles, more than 80 international companies and more than 100 associate
service providers. Staffed by magazine industry specialists, the MPA is
headquartered in New York City, with an office of government affairs in
Washington, DC.''

Cf. the distributors' organization IPDA
and the sister organization ASME for editors.

Cf. the distributors' organization IPDA
and the sister organization ASME for editors.

MPA

Maritime Patrol Aircraft.

MPA

Marriage Protection Amendment. It's a special rider to your marriage
contract. For just one dollar a month extra you get double indemnity in case
of divorce, plus it pays for a loaner during separations. Let me just check
on the details here a moment.... Whoa! It's something else altogether.

It's a proposed amendment to the US constitution, nominally intended to outlaw
any kind of marriage other than the main sort traditional in the West, between
one man and one woman at a time.

Missouri Pharmacy Association. You
might be forgiven for guessing it was the ``Missouri Pharmacists
Association,'' or that it uses the initialism MPhA, as do the
MPhA, the
MPhA, the
MPhA, and the
MPhA. It probably has something to do with the
Missouree/Missourah thing.

MPAA

Motion Picture Association of America.
Founded in 1922 as the MPPDA and renamed in 1945.
Headed by President Eric Johnston (1945-1962), and then the legendary Jack
Valenti -- forever or to the end of August 2004, whichever came first. His
successor as president and CEO is Dan Glickman,
former Democratic congressman for Kansas (the state,
not the rock musicians), secretary
of agriculture for President Clinton, and lobbyist for Disney.

Since the late 1960's, they have issued the ``voluntary'' classifications
that have generally replaced actual censorship of movies in the US.

The original scheme was G, M, R, X - the first three letters stood for
General, Mature, and Restricted. M was found to be confusing and was
quickly renamed to GP (General audiences, Parental guidance suggested)
and then to PG (Parental Guidance). PG-13 was added in the 1980's.
The current system is described
here.

MPB

Male-Pattern Baldness.

MPC

Marginal Propensity to Consume. The fraction of extra income that
consumers spend, rather than save. More at the MPS entry.

I don't know what it stands for, but it seems to be an operating system
for HP 3000-series computers. Certainly it's not

MPE

MultiProfessional Education. Interdisciplinary competence right out of
the undergraduate education box.

MPEAA

Motion Picture Export Association of America.

MPEG

Motion Picture Experts Group of the CCITT.
Also designates the digital movie encoding defined by this group, files of
which typically take a .mpg extension. Pronounced ``Emm-peg.''
Cf.JPEG.

MPEG 1

The original MPEG standard (ISO/IEC IS 11172) publ. 8/93, concerned
A/V delivered on compact
discs, and was designed for 1.2 Mbps video
bit rate and 250 kbps two-channel (stereo) audio.

Note that viewing occurs in real time, so decompression must be done on
the fly. This means that, whereas the ultimate resolution of images
extracted from JPEG's is limited only by file
size, the resolution of MPEG video is also constrained by bit rates.

Notice the archaic spelling Mittheilung for Mitteilung. Der
Erzherzog, translated archduke in this context, was the title of the Austrian crown prince. Theil was the earlier
spelling of the root word Teil, back when aspirated and unaspirated
initial tees were phonemically distinguished. I think it was a proclamation of
the Kaiser that, taking cognizance of the general disappearance of the
distinction, standardized the spelling by removing the aitch (with a few
exceptions for foreign words like Theater).

Marr-Poggio-Grinson algorithm. Not Marr-Poggio-Godot!
A model of higher-animal visual analysis.

MPH

Master of Public Health (conferee) or Masters in Public Health (program).

MPH

Miles Per Hour. Faster than KPH by a factor of about 8/5, or exactly
1.609344. Last time I wanted to contest a speeding ticket, however, I found
out that because under Indiana law, speeding is just
a ``violation'' and does not even achieve misdemeanor status, the standard of
proof is ``preponderance of the evidence.'' What this means quantitatively is
that if the judge figures Mr. Officer is just slightly likelier to be right
than Mr. DefendANT, say 50.00001% to
49.99999%, then you owe 100% of the speeding ticket plus court costs, which
ain't nothing after you see your insurance bill.

One of my college roommates had gotten into a bad accident in high school and
couldn't afford the car insurance rates it caused. So he got a motorcycle.
Insurance companies promote safety, but premiums probably aren't the mechanism.

Metropolitan Planning Organization. The US government has a program to
designate official MPO's. WILMAPCO is one such
official MPO. MPO's are a highly seductive form of faux federalism; under the
guise of seeking local advice on how to spend federal transportation dollars,
the federal government leverages tax money that it returns to the states,
setting the agenda and general goals. MPO's include local officials, public
transportation providers and state agency representatives. In other words,
they include enough competing interests that it will always be hard to oppose
overall federal plans, and much easier to compete against other MPO's by
committing state matching funds to implement federal plans. Freedom is a
gilded cage.

The government serves a directory of
MPO's that was current in October (October 1994). AMPO might have more
up-to-date information.

MPO

Military Post Office. A post office associated with a military
installation. Addresses in the US military take a form that is purposely
shoehorned into the civilian (USPS) form. For
example,

Here APO is the ``city'' and AE is the ``state'' code. APO (Army Post Office) and FPO (Fleet Post Office) are the only two ``cities''
that should occur. For the obvious historical reasons (see USAAF), APO serves for army and air
force installations. The only ``states'' are
``AA,''
``AE,'' and ``AP.''

An ideal voltage source drives as much current as its load wants to draw. This
implies that it provides as much power (voltage × current) as desired.
In your dreams. Real power supplies can only supply finite power, so they
deviate from ideal voltage sources. The voltage at zero current is called the
open-circuit voltage VOC (since zero
current flows when the circuit is open). Need I add that since no power is
supplied when no current is drawn, the maximum power from a real power supply
is achieved at nonzero voltage? No, of course I needn't add that. I'm just
bulking up the entry. I'm paid by the word, you know. The rate is pretty low
-- zero, to be precise -- but I'm hoping that with enough words it'll add up to
something.

Equivalently, one can view a power supply as a current source. The current
supplied when the power-supply voltage is zero is called the short-circuit
current ISC. Short-circuiting a power
supply is usually unhealthy for something and possibly someone.

The current I supplied by a real power source is a smooth function I(V) of the
voltage V. (It's a funny thing: smoothness assumptions are not approximations.
Instead, nondifferentiable functions in science and engineering are
approximations of more accurate functions that really are smooth. Even the
best examples of nondifferentiable functions, the singularities and
discontinuties called phase transitions in thermodyamics, are really the result
of taking the limit of infinitely large thermodynamic systems.
Large-but-finite systems are characterized by very rapidly varying
thermodynamic functions that are experimentally indistinguishable from singular
functions, as numbers like 10-24, in whatever macroscopic units, are
indistinguishable from 0.)

Anyway, by assumption the power P = V × I(V) is a
smooth function, and we maximize it by finding a point where the derivative
w.r.t. V is zero. Applying the product rule for
derivatives... (Just to interrupt here. For almost all readers, this
discussion is either blindingly obvious and staggeringly slow, or mysterious
and waaaaaaaay too fast. Sorry.)
... and doing a little rearranging, we find a condition

I dI
- = - --
V dV

satisfied at the MPP. If the load is just a dumb resistance R, then according
to Ohm's Law the left-hand side above is just R.
The right-hand side is just the internal resistance
r of the power supply at the MPP. (A very similar calculation leads to the
famous rule that power to a loudspeaker is maximized when the output impedance
of the final amplifier stage equals the impedance of the speaker.)

A standard figure-of-merit for power supplies is the
fill factor F. This is simply the maximum power
Pmax divided by the maximum conceivable power
VOCISC. Equivalently:

P V I
max MP MP
FF = ------ = --- × --- ,
V I V I
OC SC OC SC

where VMP and IMP are the voltage and current at the
MPP.

MPP

Member of [Canadian] Provincial Parliament
(also MLA). In Quebec, this is called an MNA.

Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. An organization
headed throughout its existence under that name (1922-1945) by President
Will H. Hays. Hays is famous for the Hays Code, a code of voluntary
self-censorship by the movie industry. In 1945, Eric Johnston became president
of the organization, and it assumed its current name, abbreviated MPAA.

Minnesota Public Radio. I've never heard
anyone use this abbreviation in speech, probably because, despite the
exhausting length of ``Minnesota'' (use MN on
envelopes, Minn. when the abbreviation is not part
of an address), ``MPR'' sounds too much like ``NPR''
(National Public Radio). The only reason I put this entry here was to have a
link to the homepage for A Prairie Home
Companion.

MPR

Mouvement populaire de la révolution.
The political party that Mobutu created in 1967, a
little over a year after Mobutu's coup of November 24, 1965. This was not just
made the sole legal party of the one-party state; even the option of sullen
nonparticipation was foreclosed: MPR membership was obligatory for all Zairians (or maybe all adults, I'm not sure if there was
any sort of lower age limit). Actually, they weren't ``Zairians'' until 1971,
when Mobutu changed the country's name. That year he also held national
``elections.'' In the presidential, uh, contest, Mr. Mobutu ran unopposed.
Voters supporting the incumbent could cast a green ballot paper, symbolizing
``progress.'' Voters opposed to the election of the incumbent could cast a red
ballot paper, described as symbolizing ``chaos'' (or anyway, the consequences
of a vote against). According to the government count, 157 red ballots were
cast. Cf.ARV.

MPRE

Multi-state Professional Responsibility Examination.

MPS

Marginal Propensity to Save. The fraction of extra income that is saved.

An optimistic view of fiscal stimulus holds that, because of knock-on effects,
putting an amount x in consumers' pockets generates a larger-than-x increase in
overall spending. Explicitly, the initial spending x goes into the pockets of
someone else, who spends a fraction MPC
(marginal propensity to consume) of it, generating a further contribution xMPC
to total consumption. That in its turn generates a further contribution
x(MPC)2 in the next round, and so forth. It's obviously a geometric
series, and an infinite one to some approximation, so the total increase in
consumption is really

x( 1 + MPC + MPC2 + ...) = x/(1-MPC).

This enhancement is called the multiplier effect, and the factor 1/(1-MPC) is
called the GDP multiplier. (See the relevant bit
connected with Joseph Black for another economic factor.) On the reasoning
that money not spent is saved, MPC+MPS=1, and the multiplier factor is 1/MPS.

There is a lot wrong with this analysis, of course. Just off the top of my
head, here are a couple -- my downpayment on a complete entry:

Initial spending: The original computation envision the initial
fiscal stimulus as an increase in direct spending by the government. In
practice, however, part (sometimes much) of the fiscal stimulus is in the form
of transfers to private consumers. No matter how this fiscal stimulus is put
into potential consumers' pockets, it isn't consumption until it leaves those
pockets to make purchases. So the multiplier for this part is really
MPC0/MPS, where is MPC0 is the consumers' marginal
propensity to spend money received as ``fiscal stimulus'' (really as a tax
credit, say). A simple assumption is that MPC0=MPC, which would
yield a multiplier of MPC/(1-MPC), for which the maximum value is 1, when
MPC=0.5. Hence, the multiplier is essentially always less than unity. There
are, in fact, many arguments and some economics-``Nobel''-prize-winning
empirical research that suggest that MPC0 will in fact be lower than
MPC, further decreasing the effect of the stimulus.

Marginal propensity to pay taxes and service overdue debt: It ain't
zero. You can do this one yourself: MPC = 1 - MPS... - MPT - MPD. It lowers
MPC and consequently the multiplier.

MPS

Medium-Powered Satellite. One kind of ``consumer satellite'' (the other
is DBS, q.v.). Has lower power (50 W per
channel) than DBS, but more channels.

MPS

Message { Processing | Passing } System. IF the teacher catches you,
be ready to do hard time at the end of the school day.

Muttahida Qaumi Movement. A secular Pakistani political grouping of
muhajirs (immigrants or refugees from India in 1947). Its leader, Altai Husain, lives in
exile; the group itself has turned increasingly fascist in recent years.

(Domain name code for) Mauritania. Apparently this is
not the same place as Mauritius (.mu).

M.R.

Miniature Railroading. A magazine published 1938-41. Not sure
anyone ever used this abbreviation, but if you even momentarily thought that
this might be what you sought an expansion for, you should check
MR below.

Mr

MisteR. In British usage, and somewhat less commonly in Commonwealth
usage, periods are now often omitted from a great many abbreviations that used
to, and in the US still do, have them. This started out as an imitation of
French practice that was advocated for English by Fowler. More later, okay?

Mr.

Mister.

MR

Model Railroader.
The most popular railroad modelers' magazine, published since 1934.

(You can ignore that. It was just a note to the editor. It turned out to be
the wrong MR anyway. It was Modern
Railways. You have no idea of the magnitude of selfless research
effort that goes into writing this apparently careless reference work!)

MR

Not a good abbreviation for Model Railroading Magazine,
published since 1979. Because of the namespace collision and priority, this is
normally abbreviated MRG (by the magazine itself and
by modelers generally).

MR

Modem Ready. A standard light on external modems.

MR

Modern Railways.
A monthly.
``Modern Railways has been published since 1962 but its predecessor title,
Trains Illustrated, first began publication in the 1940s. ...''
Covers all aspects of the business in Britain ``and abroad.''

MR

Modified Richmond. MR magazines are a kind of subterranean concrete
bunker used as ammo dumps for nuclear weapons.

Multiple Regression Analysis. Name applied to various statistical methods
that attempt to isolate the effects of multiple independent variables
on a single dependent variable.

MRAM

Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory (RAM).
A chip that stores bits as magnetic material orientation, and reads out by
detection of magnetoresistive effect.

MRAP

Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicle. Pronounced ``em-wrap.'' The
specific ones to which this term is applied are manufactured for the US
military by three companies, each with their own models. Their first
deployments were in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mouvement contre le Racisme et
l'Antisémitisme et pour la Paix. This organization
was founded in 1949 (i.e., after the war),
in part by former members of the MNCR. It changed
its name to Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour
l'Amitié entre les Peuples in 1977.

Mr. Blackwell

Mr. B doesn't use a first name.
He is known for his annual (since 1960) worst dressed list of women and
transvestites. Mr. B is bowtie-positive.
As a literary stylist, Mr. B is quite a ladies' fashion designer. Here
are some vital statistics on his recycled word fashions:

1996:
again seventh on the honors list of fabulous fashion independents

Clintons

Hillary Rodham:1993:
first on the honors list of fabulous fashion independents
1995:
fourth on the honors list of fabulous fashion independents
1998:
sixth on the honors list of fabulous fashion independents; behind
even Madeleine Albright

Chelsea:1996:
fifth on the honors list of fabulous fashion independents; just
beats out Whitney Houston. Time for a new dartboard.

MRBM

Medium-Range Ballistic Missile. Range between 1000 and about 2500 km.
You'd get a lot more invitations to summits and prestigious international
parlays if just put a couple of hundred million into developing IRBM's. Everybody's got MRBM's now. Isn't it
about time you moved up?

Model RailroadinG Magazine. Published since 1979. The G serves to
distinguish it from the Model Railroader, which has seniority
(MR).

MRGO

Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet. Pronounced ``Mister Go.'' MRGO is a
shipping channel that was dug in the 1960's as a shortcut to New Orleans and
a way to boost development of reclaimed swampland east of the city. Many
scientists and activists have claimed that MRGO boosted the flooding and
destruction of that reclaimed swampland, and low-lying eastern parts of the
city.

MRH

MagnetoResistive Head. (Magnetic recording and sensing element.)

MRI

Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Imaging using NMR.
Invented by Dr. Raymond Damadian and patented in 1974. Fashionable
medical imaging technology that can image soft tissue with great
sensitivity to histology. The data processing involved is quite
nontrivial. Originally called NMR imaging, its current name presumably
reflects ignorant public resistance to anything with ``nookyuler'' in it.
VideNMR. Then again, there's also
Neonatal Mortality Rate (NMR) for it to be
confused with.

Noninvasive, but getting inside the magnet makes many people claustrophobic.

In the 7 March 1994 New Yorker, Alfred Kazin wrote

My cancer is so real to a lot of people that they feel free to probe me
front and behind, stick me, prick me, haul me up and down, insert my
claustrophobic head in the drum of one scan after another, in a process
splendidly named Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Medical Records Institute. I
admire them for sticking with the initialism. In the future, I plan to say
things like ``I guess you must mean magnetic resonance imaging, rather than
Medical Records Institute,'' just to be a pain in the ass.

Messenger RNA (videRNA). A segment of
RNA that transcribes genes coded in DNA.

MRP

Manufacturing Requirements Planning.

MRO

Maintenance, Repair, and Operations,

MRO

Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter. A NASA vehicle that
weighs one ton fully fuelled. It's the first NASA mission to Mars since the
twin rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) landed in January 2004. Launched on an
Atlas 5 rocket on August 12, 2005, MRO will orbit Mars at an average altitude
of 300 kilometers. Observations should begin in November 2006.

It has the largest telescopic camera ever sent to another planet, and plans are
for it to orbit Mars for at least four years. Data from MRO will help in
planning where to land two robotic subsequent explorers: the Phoenix Mars
Scout, to be launched in 2007, which will search for organic chemicals, and the
Mars Science Laboratory to be launched 2009.

MRP

Manufacturing Resource Planning.

MRP

Material Resource Planning.

Mrs.

Missus. Used as a courtesy title for married women and widows. (Back
when people were more careful about these things, before the women's rights
movement, and especially before mass direct mail solicitations, a further
convention dictated the use of a woman's first name if she was widowed, and
her husband's given name if she was not.)

Originally an abbreviation of mistress, but now the latter word has
some offensive denotations, so a slurred version (missis, missus) of the
original word is used. Nevertheless, the word missus continues to
be regarded by many as slang, and while other courtesy titles (Mister, Miss,
Reverend) are occasionally written out, Mrs. is much less frequently
written out, and rarely as Missus. A lot of people wonder what the
arr (r) in Mrs. stands for.

The word madam has suffered similar depredations. However, the
abbreviation Mmes. of its plural is used in lieu of an accepted
plural for Mrs.

Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus. Sometimes pronounced
``merza.'' When MRSA was first identified in the 1960's, it was transmitted
primarily in hospitals, sort of like child-bed fever, and affected only those
with weakened immune systems. More recently at least two new strains
have appeared that are being transmitted outside hospitals and being contracted
by otherwise healthy individuals. The familiar old group of strains is now
distinguished as HA-MRSA (hospital-acquired MRSA)
and the new group of strains is called CA-MRSA
(community-acquired). See also VRSA. Here's a
summary from APUA.

MRSEC

Materials Research Science and Engineering Center.

MRT

Mass Rail Transit. The Singapore subway.

MS

Management System(s).

ms., MS

Manuscript.

MS

Mass Spectro { metry | scopy }. The first term is more accurate, the
second term ( -scopy) is more common.
[The initialism seems to be used principally in the
abbreviation of compounds, like MS/MS.]

Mean Square. Often used in ANOVA to designate the variance (i.e.,
mean value of the square of the deviation from the mean; a/k/a the square of
the standard deviation). Possibly the reason it's a more common usage in
ANOVA is that the heavy numerical burden long ago put computers into the
middle of the discussion, when they didn't speak Greek characters.

MS

Meta Signaling.

MS

Metal-Semiconductor.

MS, M$

MicroSoft, Inc.
(The first abbreviation is commonly used in product names.)

Middle School. Name for two- or three-year school (grades 7-8 or 6-8)
preceding high school (grades 9-12). In other systems, grades 7-12 are
divided into junior high school (7-9) and
senior high (10-12). This is the
province of the states, by settled interpretation of the
tenth amendment to the US
constitution.

During the 1990's, one of the more widespread education fads was the idea that
children of middle school age have special in-between needs that are not well
served by either elementary school or high school. It gives you some idea of
how dim the education poobahs are, that this crude and essentially empty
thought was seen as a cogent reason for converting junior high-senior high
school systems into middle school-high school systems.

Master of Science in Administration. A graduate business degree. This
expansion is more common than the preceding one. One possible interpretation
is that administration is more of a science than accountancy. I'm okay widdat.

MSA

Medical Savings Account. Sort of like a Christmas savings plan, but with
tax benefits. An Archer MSA is also known as Medicare Advantage MSA.

MSA

Methane Sulfonic Acid.

MSA

Metropolitan Statistical Area. Defined by the US Census Bureau after every
census (i.e., every ten years). For US commercial purposes, RMA and MSA are the two standard definitions of
urban regions. Read about it in this PDF file.

Midwest Surgical Association.
It's self-described as an organization ``of surgeons who have established
reputations as practitioners, authors, teachers, and/or original investigators.
The objective of this society is to exemplify and promote the highest standards
of surgical practice, especially among young surgeons in the Midwest. The
annual meeting is held in August each year in different locations throughout
the Midwest and consists of a stimulating scientific program of the highest
quality and a social program planned with children and families in mind.''

Malawi Savings Bank. Founded in 1994, in the
process of privatizing since 2003 or before. The latest I read was than in
mid-2005, in Phase II of a three-phase project, the government owned 100% of the
bank.

Monetary Stabilization Bond. MSB's of various descriptions, in terms up to
a couple of years, are issued by the Bank of Korea
in order to control inflation generated by a weak-won policy.
Christopher
Lingle's analysis (over my head) is at TCS.

Maintaining an artificially low exchange rate against major foreign currencies
is a common strategy of export-led economies. However, maintaining a weak
currency feeds domestic inflation by raising the prices of imported goods as
well as the local-currency value of export earnings. (``Raising'' them
relative to what they would be absent aggressive quasi-mercantilist government
interventions.) The monetary approach to this problem is to soak up the excess
liquidity with MSB's. (Another strategy is to keep a well-employed population
from spending its earnings is to promote domestic investment in government
savings bonds, as the US did to control inflation during
WWII.)

Some other countries in the region with growth strategies similar to Korea's
are currently (2005) using similar instruments: in
Malaysia the BNM issues
Bank Negara bills, and Bank Indonesia offers Sertifikat Bank Indonesia. From
time to time, other countries have issued such bonds, but South Korea is
apparently the only country that currently calls them by the generic name of
MSB's. (No, I don't know the Korean for that.) Since we're talking won
and inflation, you want to make sure you're familiar with the material at the
WIN entry.

A political consulting and telephone campaigning firm based in
Salem, Oregon. The MSB of the name appears to be constructed from the
final initials of co-owners Kristina McCall, Marilyn Shannon (former
state senator from Brooks), and Mike Basinger.

Mid-Size Bus
Manufacturers Association. An NTEA group
formed in 1993 ``to improve professionalism, safety and product quality in the
mid-size bus industry. Mid-size buses are defined as passenger-carrying motor
coaches, built on a cutaway or rail chassis or on monocoque construction, under
40' in length and having a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) class of VII or less.''

Mediaeval Studies Doctorate. Also ``Doctorate in Mediaeval Studies.'' You
know how really cruel, gruesome torture is often
described as ``medieval''? That is
the sense in which the word is used in this expansion. If you are a sensitive
person, or if you think you are not a sensitive person but then again you
haven't visited hell yet, then you should pause here and consider just how
badly you want to know the significance of the M.S.D. They say that LSD can sometimes drive you crazy, but...

Very well, then, but don't say you weren't warned.

Usually, ``doctorate'' implies some sort of Ph.D..
That's not its sense in M.S.D. At PIMS, which
administers the M.S.D., a Ph.D. is just a prerequisite for candidacy to
a different degree, the LMS. In contrast, the MSD
isn't something you apply or ask for. Instead, according to this detailed confession, a
``Licentiate candidate who has shown unusual promise as a research scholar may
be invited to enter the MSD programme, which consists of at least two
full years of study and research beyond the Licence.'' [Emphasis added.]

As Bud Abbott would have put it, ``a p-p-, a p-p- -- a post-post-doctoral
doctorate!'' When they get the news, the disbelieving ``invitees'' fall to
their knees and scream ``NOOOOoooo!!!'' as tears of maniacal joy stream down
their contorted faces and they are dragged away.

Incidentally, rumors that the letters ess and em in MSD stand for sadism and
masochism are obviously untrue. Given the order in which they appear, they
would have to stand for masochism first, and then sadism.

MSD

Most Significant Digit. I'd have to go with the index or middle finger on
this one, on the right hand, anyway. For binary representation, MSD is MSB.

MicroSoft DOS, ``MS-DOS,'' ``MS-DOG,''
``Maybe SomeDay an Operating System.'' Slightly
different from PC-DOS, which Microsoft developed
for and sold to IBM for its PC. The difference
enabled it to run on other machines based on Intel
chips (clones) without crashing due to intellectual-property problems. If
Kildall had thought of this, maybe ... (lament FOLDOC's
CP/M entry).

NOAA serves a list of links to publicly accessible
MSDS information, including the above (whose URL's, if they change, will
more likely be up-to-date at NOAA than here). The whole thing is
mirrored in Japan. A short link list is at Michigan State U.

MSE

Master of Science in Engineering.

MSE

Materials Science and Engineering.

MSE

Mean Square[d] Error. This has nothing to do with the other things
designated by the same acronym. An accident of letters! Mere homonyms!

MSE

Mobile Subscriber Equipment.

MSE

Montréal Stock Exchange.

MSEL

Master Scenario Events List. Part of the civilian war-gaming for
emergencies.

``Wine Stewards Without Borders'' is the caption of a New Yorker cartoon
(p. 75, issue of Feb. 18 & 25, 2002; cartoonist so famous his signature
need not be legible). Attired for an upscale fine dining experience, the
WSWB pours a drink for the reclining wino on a streetcorner.

MonoSodium Glutamate. It's typically made from chumetz, so it's not
kosher l'Pesach. If this does not compute, then it's very unlikely to
be as big of a headache for you as Chinese take-out.

MSG was first isolated by Japanese scientists, and Japan today has the world's
highest per capita consumption of MSG. MSG was introduced to China
around the beginning of the twentieth century, and China is today the world's
largest producer and consumer of MSG, producing 650,000 tons a year (as of
1999). Most of that goes to domestic human consumption, an
estimated 1.3 lb. per capita per annum. It's also used in medicines and in a
salty hard candy that is a popular export to West Africa. There are also
proposals to put it in livestock feed to fatten animals more quickly. The
Chinese name for MSG is wei jing, `flavor essence,' essentially
equivalent to the Japanese name umami.

MSG first became widely known in the US through its use in Chinese restaurants.
Chinese restaurant syndrome is the reaction of sensitive people to high doses
of MSG. A wide variety of side effects have been reported from MSG, including
fainting and headaches. (Hair loss is one feared in China.) Animal and human
studies suggest that sensitivity to or inadequate metabolization of MSG results
from vitamin B6 deficiency and can be reversed with B6 supplementation.

MSG is well known to be a major ingredient of flavor enhancers like
Accent®. However, it is often also present in hydrolyzed vegetable protein, textured vegetable protein, gelatin, yeast
extracts, calcium and sodium caseinate, vegetable broth, whey, smoke flavoring,
malt extracts, and several other food components. When MSG is only introduced
indirectly as a component of such ingredients, the ingredients list of a food
will not list MSG.

In 1987 the WHO placed MSG on its list of safest
ingredients, with items like salt and vinegar. In 1995 an FDA report concluded that ``MSG and related substances
are safe food ingredients for most people when eaten at the customary level.''
It also concluded, however, that large quantities can produce transient
symptoms, particularly in asthmatics.

In addition to its main flavor effect, MSG also tastes salty, since salt taste
is caused by sodium ions. However, MSG does not have a high degree of
ionization in water (or saliva), so the degree of saltiness per sodium ion is
low. This has led to problems with cooks who season with MSG by saltiness.
That is, using MSG as weak salt, they end up using too much MSG as MSG.

Mega PSI. I suppose you could expand that as
Millions of pounds per Square Inch, but another more common abbreviation,
KSI, established a presumptive pattern of metric
prefixes. 1 MSI = 6.895 GPa.

MSI

Metal-Semiconductor Interface.

M'sian

MalaySIAN.

MSIC

Mixed-Signal Integrated Circuit.

MSIE

Microsoft Internet Explorer. A graphical
web browser. Back in 1996-7, about 50% of visitors to SBF used MSIE; most of the rest use Netscape Navigator. As of 2002, MSIE is at
well over 90%. Microsoft's practice of strong-arming software developers and
PC retailers into closing Netscape out of market share, and eventual
integration of the MS's IE browser with its
Windows Explorer (the file-manipulation application) were at the center
of the antitrust litigation against Microsoft from 1999 or so. Early on in
that story, Netscape (along with Time-Warner, and some other media
conglomerates comprising formerly independent companies) was swallowed up by
AOL.

MSIL

MicroSoft Intermediate Language. Usually called IL, when context is
adequate. In the Microsoft.NET Framework (usually ``.NET Framework'') or maybe
it's on the ``.NET Platform,'' programming languages are compiled into IL.
At run time, the .NET JIT
compiler compiles the IL to produce an executable application in memory.

MSKCC

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

MSL

Martha Stewart Living. A magazine. (Not this kind.) This MS character -- does she have
qualifications or anything?

Mediaeval Studies Licence. Also LMS. A
license to study mediaevals, evidently. You can get an official one from PIMS.

(A ``licence'' is an even more general term than ``baccalaureate,'' and the
latter has been used to refer to a range of academic levels of accomplishment
(sometimes in the same school at the same time). In Latin America and Iberia,
the licenciatura is now some kind of undergraduate degree, although the
term has also been used for an honors secondary degree that was regarded as a
first undergraduate degree. At PIMS it's a post-doctoral program. Go
figure.)

MSL

Mirrored Server Link.

MSLP

Mixed Signal and Logic Product.

MSLT

Multiple Sleep Latency Test.

MSM

MainStream [news]Media. In principle, this term needn't be pejorative, but
in practice it and its initialism are. One reason might be that those
satisfied with the performance of the MSM think of them simply as ``the
media.''

MSM

Man Seeking Man. I think that ``men seeking men'' may be MSM's. Acronyms
can make a hash of any language's morphology. I don't think one needs an
acronym for ``men seeking man.'' It sounds a touch ominous, like a posse after
Clyde Barrow. Why would men seek men (otherwise)? If you have to ask, the
next entry may provide enlightenment.

MSM

Man who has Sex with Men. Or maybe the category Men who have Sex with Men.
The initialism is used in medicine, and in public health and social services.
Look, once you know the expansion, you can write the entry yourself. If you
(think the terms medicine and public health overlap too much,
just get out your crayon and edit.) MSM is a useful term because it makes no
reference to sexual preference. It thus includes men who are not regarded as
gay (like all those institutionalized men inteviewed by Kinsey) or who do not
regard themselves as gay or who resist self-identifying as ``gay'' or
``homosexual.'' There's a bit of movie dialogue relevant to this at the entry
for Wow, who's the mother? For
other thoughts, cf.see this WSW entry.

Tory MSP Jamie McGrigor, twice-married and a father of five, was at a
parliamentary dinner in Edinburgh with some Pfizer executives when discussion
turned to the needs of isolated sheep farmers. One problem they face,
according to the Scottish Daily Record & Sunday Mail, is ``find[ing]
themselves snowed-in for weeks at a time in deepest winter.'' This apparently
suggested an opportunity to address another problem: the declining number of
Highlands shepherds. (According to the trashy but aptly named tabloid The People, ``the population of the Highlands is set to fall below
200,000 by 2017.'') Pfizer manufactures Viagra, and McGrigor suggested that
the company might distribute it free to shepherds, to help raise the sagging
population. (That's how he should have phrased it, but his exact words were
not reliably reported.) McGrigor, 54, is a stockbroker as well as a ``hill
[i.e. sheep] farmer.'' He said later that ``[i]t was a bit of a joke
but it is not a bad idea. I am still waiting to hear from Pfizer.'' Pfizer
already distributes freebies like jackets to promote its animal husbandry
products, nudge-nudge, wink-wink, such as sheep dip. (Mmmm-mmm! Goes great
with blue pills!) A spokesman for Pfizer said later that they were ``actively
considering Jamie's proposition. Anything we can do to help valued customers
such as Scotland's sheep farmers is worth considering.''

This news was reported on June 27, 2004. The very next day, there was a load
of stories, including this one in The
Scotsman, about khat. Khat is an African plant which is chewed for its
hallucinogenic and stimulant effects. At the time, khat was illegal in the US
and Canada, and in most of the EU but not the UK, where it is popular in the
Somali community.

The active ingredient in khat is cathinone, which is broken down into various
phenylpropanolamines (PPA's). PPA's are a common
class of stimulants, sold OTC and by prescription in
various diet and asthma medications. As you can imagine, that's not why I
mention them here in the entry for Scottish Parliament members. The
news reported on June 28, 2004, was on findings reported that day in Berlin, at
the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and
Embryology. It turns out that certain PPA's from cathinone help sperm cells
through the final stage of maturation, when they develop the ability to
fertilize.

Indepthopaedia:
The research was reported by Professor Lynn Fraser (who gave the talk) and
Dr. Susan Adeoya-Osiguwa, of King's College London. Uh, yeah, there's more,
but I'm too squeamish to include it.

Multicultural Student Programs & Services. There's one at the
University of Notre Dame, and it's based in the
Intercultural Center, with an office in the La Fortune Student Center.

That's right -- apparently concentric centers.

On Tuesday, at a McDonald's on I-80 in
Pennsylvania, I listened attentively as
the girl behind the counter mixed up orders and chatted with her coworkers. I made a big problem for her: my
order cost $4.47, I gave her a ten and, as she efficiently keyed in $10 on the
cash register, I gave her seven cents. Now she was in a bind since, to perform
the modified change calculation, she might have to do something complicated
like cancel the order. Thrown back on her own resources, she DID THE MATH IN
HER HEAD! This involved a carry operation, I believe. Then she asked her
scurrying coworkers at large if $5.60 was correct, explaining as she did the
charge and the cash tendered. I'm afraid that rather dulled the shine on her
immediately previous achievement. Later, as my food item was being assembled, she chatted on
about how she was going to take Geometry again, because she enjoyed it so much
the first time. I was relatively quiet.

MSR

Main Street Rag. ``Main Street
Rag Publishing Company has been publishing our print magazine: Main Street Rag,
uninterrupted since 1996. Among its features are poetry, short fiction,
photography and graphic images, essays, interviews, reviews, cartoons and
commentary.''

Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price. In principle, any manufactured
product sold retail might have an MSRP, but in practice the term and the
initialism are most commonly used in the context of new private passenger
vehicle sales. This term probably originated as a compression of phrases on
the pattern of ``retail price ... suggested by the manufacturer'' that occur in
the Automobile Information Disclosure Act of 1958 (AIDA). That law required all new cars to bear
window stickers, removable only by the purchaser, stating various sorts of
information. (The sticker is called the Monroney sticker, after the author of
the AIDA. And here you thought that was Verdi.)
Inter alii, the sticker must list the MSRP of the base (``stripped'')
vehicle, of options included in the particular vehicle, the amount the
manufacturer charged the dealer for transportation from final point of
assembly, and total MSRP (``full sticker price''), is the sum of those.

Some or all of the dollar amounts are meaningless in principle, particularly
since certain combinations of options are rare or nonexistent. In practice, it
may be conceded that the sticker does provide some useful information to the
prospective buyer, including what options are included, and now the EPA mileage estimates (YMMV).
The total sticker price provides a point of reference. In particular, no one
pays the full sticker price except on high-demand/short-supply vehicles.

Once it became legally required, the MSRP was added to the palette of artists
(car salesmen and car salespersons) who create attractive images for
car-buyers. To inflate the price, they can add ``preparation charges,''
``advertising charges'' (I kid you not), extra transportation charges. Once
upon a time, dealers were often in the business of installing post-manufacture
options, and charges for these things could be inflated. The price inflation
serves two main purposes. One is for the dealer to quote you a low-ball price
exclusive of the extras, and then add them to bring the price up after getting
past ``yes.'' The other is to appear to offer a better deal by offering to
discount the inflated price or offering better financing or a bigger trade-in
allowance.

Car dealers have long had the reputation of being the sleaziest of all
retailers, and I don't know anyone who thinks that reputation is undeserved.
Maybe I'll ask around. Anyway, many people I know have delayed or avoided
buying a new car (or buying a used car from a lot rather than from an owner)
simply because dealing with dealers is a degrading and stressful experience.
In theory, this might create a niche for honest dealers, and perhaps they
exist, but the main market manifestations of the disgust have been
work-arounds: information services of various sorts and buying or bidding
services. If one knows more or less precisely what kind of car one wants, the
latter services make it possible to reach a final purchase price without having
to interact directly with a dealer.

Car information services take many forms. For particular used cars, there's
CARFAX Vehicle History
Reports. In general, Edmunds.com and
Kelley Blue Book are good places to start for
both used and new cars. There are many others, all doing something like what
the AIDA was originally intended to do. You know how to google, don't you?

For new cars, the main piece of information that has changed the dynamics of
car-buying is the dealer invoice price. Back around 1990, when this
information began to be widely available, new-car dealers protested the
unfairness of having their costs revealed, when other retailers (the kind that
aren't nearly so sleazy) can mark up with impunity. After all, they have fixed
costs! Eventually they adjusted. I don't know to what extent it was part of
the adjustment, and to what extent it was a pre-existing arrangement, but one
thing that makes the invoice price less informative than it seems is the
``holdback.'' Typically on cars sold in the US there is a 3% holdback that the
manufacturer pays the dealer once the vehicle is sold. (About 3% of the MSRP,
or a slightly larger percentage of dealer invoice.) This is why it is easy for
dealers to advertise ``BELOW INVOICE! BELOW DEALER INVOICE!!'' (That's before
various other charges, of course, to say nothing of government-imposed costs --
DMV registration, sales tax, and especially
whatever.)

In addition to the holdback, from time to time manufacturers may offer ``dealer
incentives'' of, say, a few hundred dollars per vehicle. Sometimes
manufacturers offer incentives directly to purchasers.

Mount Saint Vincent University. Founded
as Mount St. Vincent Academy by the Sisters of Charity in 1872, it has
undergone a sequence of minor name changes, the last one in 1966. In 1967
the school admitted male students for the first time, but as of 2004, the
ratio of female to male students was still about 4:1. The school is commonly
referred to as ``The Mount.'' See cheating.

(Domain code for) Malta. An island nation in the
Mediterranean. It does my heart good to spell Mediterranean correctly on the
first try, but not that much good. I've done it before. (You'll just
have to take my word on it, even though it is very important.) Valletta is the
national capital, located on the main island, which is also called Malta.

Maltese is spoken on Malta, Gozo, and Comino. It can be honestly said that
every person living on the two other islands of the Maltese Archipelago,
Cominotto and Filfla, is fluent in at least four languages besides Maltese.
This is tremendously useful in principle, but it's only true because there are
no persons living on these islands. Okay, bad joke. When I think of a better
I'll replace it. Start boning up on your Dashiell Hammett.

The Maltese language is very interesting -- a Semitic language, it began as the
Arabic brought by Moslem conquerors in 870. Maltese has had an increasing
Romance component since the Christian reconquest by Normans from Sicily in
1091. The Normans sure were active in those years. From 1530 to 1798, Malta
was the stronghold of the former crusading order, the Knights Hospitaller of
St. John (who used Italian and Latin). The French
took it over in 1798 as a sideshow on the way to Egypt. (Napoleon asked for
safe harbor, then turned his guns on the port.) The French were not popular;
they provoked the island's first known popular uprising, which the English
assisted. The French hung on long enough to say hello and goodbye, or more
precisely bongu and bonswa, with meaning and sound of
bonjour and bonsoir. English rule started in 1800.

Many web pages claim that the Semitic component in Maltese dates back to the
Phoenicians. This is plausible, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of
it and I haven't seen a published scholarly source that deigns to so much as
mention the possibility. Certainly Malta was settled prehistorically, and was
for many centuries controlled by the Phoenicians and later the Carthaginians.
However, to cite a parallel situation, the survivals of Carthaginian in Spain
are negligible, apart from a few place names like Barcelona, Cartagena,
and España. My guess is that a direct connection of the Maltese
language with the Phoenicians is fanciful, and motivated by the greater
prestige of a more ancient provenance.

In the broad circumstances of its history, Maltese is similar to English. Here
is how Joseph Aquilina expressed it in the preface of his The Structure of
Maltese: A Study in Mixed Grammar and Vocabulary (1959):

Maltese is a separate language resulting from the interaction and
fusion of North African Arabic, but with its own dialect features outside the
North African group, and Siculo-Italian, covering two different cultural
strata. The Arabic element in Maltese historically very often corresponds
to the Anglo-Saxon in English, while the Romance loans correspond to the
Norman-French element. As in English, the primitive linguistic stratum is
confined mainly to the description of the obvious facts of nature and man's
reactions to them while the abstract and progressive vocabulary of the
intelligentsia belongs to later times.

Another similarity is that the underlying grammar is that of the ``primitive
stratum'' -- Semitic, in this case; Romance words have been assimilated into
the Semitic morphology. A further and most melancholy similarity is that the
mixed vocabulary has made the spelling a disaster area, reflecting etymology
about as much as pronunciation. (Even Yiddish, composed mostly of Middle High
German with only about 10% admixture of Hebrew vocabulary and even less Slavic,
uses the Hebrew character set in two very different ways for words with
different etymologies. Medieval Hebrew and Arabic were both more successful in
absorbing large amounts of Greek.) One familiar bit of etymological spelling
is the aitch, which is silent as in Italian -- with one significant exception.

Like Serbian, Maltese is written with a character set that contains an aitch-bar (an aitch with a bar through the middle
of the riser). (Note that Serbian is written with a variant of the Cyrillic
alphabet, though the aitch-bar and J characters appear to be borrowed from the
Roman; Maltese is written with a variant of the Roman character set.) The
aitch-bar represents an unvoiced pharyngeal fricative. That's like the
unvoiced velar fricative /x/ (the sound of ch in Scottish loch and
German Bach), but further back in the throat, if you can imagine. In
fact, traces of the velar sound still survived in the dialect of the island of
Gozo as recently as the 1950's, but there was apparently no phonemic
distinction. Both the velar and pharyngeal aitches occur in Arabic, but in
Maltese cognates, both sounds are represented by the aitch-bar. At the end of
a word, an ordinary h is pronounced like an aitch-bar.

As in Chinese Romanization and as in various Iberian languages (more or less
systematically), the x is usually pronounced ``sh.'' [It is sometimes
pronounced as ``zh,'' the voiced sibilant in the English word measure.
Voicing in Maltese assimilates regressively: if an x is followed by a voiced
consonant, it becomes voiced also.] Different quantities (long and short
duration) of the general sound represented by x are distinguished phonemically.
The difference is comparable to the allophonic difference in German between
final sch (long, as in Arsch, Stammtisch, etc.) and initial sch (short, as
in schleichen, Schwarze Haus). In Maltese, the longer
sound is indicated by a double x.

That Maltese has double-exes might be the best-known fact about the language,
on account of the events of 1972. In that year, Standard Oil of New Jersey
introduced a new trade name for its products. It had been selling its gasoline
under at least three different trade names: Esso, Enco, and (only in Ohio)
Humble. It would have liked to have used Esso everywhere, but ever since the
original Standard Oil had been broken up in probably the landmark
trust-busting action of the US government, there were a number of competing
Standard Oil companies that could prevent it from adopting that name. A
secretive and expensive computer-assisted search for a new name that could be
used everywhere and which meant nothing anywhere eventually yielded ``Exxon.''
[Pronounceability may not have been a major consideration. The word Exxon is
unpronounceable in the many languages (including all the Polynesian languages,
I believe) that only allow open syllables. The best one can say for this
glaring nonuniversality is that among the languages that are almost
entirely constructed of open syllables, syllabic n and syllables closed by n
are among the more common exceptions to the open-syllable rule. E.g., Italian
(esp. the Venice dialect) and Japanese. And that's to say nothing of X
itself.]

One thing simplifying the allegedly strenuous search was the claimed fact that
Maltese was the only language with a double x. Given that only a few hundred
languages are represented by Roman alphabets, it is at least conceivable that
the claim is true. On the other hand, confirming that hypothesis would
probably have cost Standard Oil of New Jersey more than the few millions it
devoted to the name search. Let's agree that double-exes are very probably
quite unusual, though it shouldn't be hard to construct a silly compound noun
with xx in German. If the term ``box xylophone'' is ever borrowed into German
from English, it ought
to become ``Boxxylophon,'' although current orthography rules allow a hyphen.

On May 1, 2004, the EU's membership officially
increased from 15 to 25, and the number of its official languages increased
from 11 to 20. All official documents are supposed to be made available in all
the official languages. The costs of translation were estimated to be about
800 million euros before the 2004 expansion. Each
new language was expected to require hiring 60 new translators (I think that
figure is for Brussels alone). Not every regional and minority language gets
to be an official language of the EU, but Maltese got the nod. At the time of
accession, no EU translators happened to know Maltese.

Malta had never had a school for translators. It wasn't necessary: Malta's
other official language is English, which is as widely spoken as the local one.
According to Jan Andersen, the chief translator in Brussels, in 2003 there was
a test for translators from Malta. Out of 16 candidates, four made it to the
final round, but all failed. I wonder who wrote the exam. Malta is racing to
catch up, but Malta isn't the only country with these problems, and as of 2006
most EU documents were only available in a limited number of languages (fewer
than 20).

You know, it stands to reason: if your native language is something common like
English or French, or a similar language like
Dutch or Romansch that makes it easy to learn one of the common languages as a
second language, then you're more likely to study something unusual as a second
or third language. (Or at least, less likely to find practicality a persuasive
reason to study something more common.) The weirder your first language, the
more attraction there will be in learning something widely-spoken as a second
language. Still, it's surprising they didn't get a Maltese-English interpreter
in the first batch. I'd put it up to a tiny country having a tiny applicant
pool.

MegaTon. The term occurs most frequently in connection with explosives of
the nuclear variety: a ``megaton of TNT equivalent''
(or a ``megatonne...'' for British ordnance) is defined as one petacalorie of
energy. (See the end of the calorie entry.)

MaTthew. Abbreviation common in NT or HJ studies, when the discussion gets
hot and GMatthew is too long.

Mt.

MounT[ain]. With a few exceptions, English names of mountains that include
a word with the mount root are either of the form Mount Foobar or
Foobar Mountain[s]. Abbreviation of plural: Mts.

MTA

{ Mail | Message } Transfer Agent. Code that passes messages between
computers, from and to other MTA's and MUA's.
Unix examples include sendmail and qmail.
sendmail actually made the cover of the New York Times (1998.03.17, give
or take a day) when a new version came out with greatly enhanced anti-Spam
features.

MTA

Massachusetts Teachers Association. Teachers' union affiliated with the NEA. The state also has a competing AFT affiliate, MFT.

The same name was formerly used in Boston (see MBTA)
and in Melbourne, Australia (come back and see Met later, after we
install an entry). In Los Angeles it could also be
used for LACMTA.

MTA

Mississippi Teachers Association. The ``colored'' teachers union, back in
apartheid days. An affiliate of the ATA,
while that existed. Read about its history at the entry for the parallel
``white'' organization, the MEA.

MTA

Movimiento de Trabajadores Argentinos. `Argentine Workers'
Movement.' Typically, like CTA, described as a
``dissident trade union confederation.'' This refers to the fact that the Argentine trade union movement is dominated by the
Peronists: see CGT.

MTA

Moving Treasury Average. The 12-month MTA (or just ``the MTA'' for short)
is an index that is commonly used as a benchmark for adjustable-rate
mortgages. It's a running average computed from the previous 12 monthly values
of the monthly one-year Treasury bills.

MTAF

Midwest Thermal Analysis Forum.
``[D]edicated to promoting the understanding of thermal analysis and related
scientific fields in the upper midwest [Minnesota,
Wisconsin, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota] of the
United States.''

MTAF

Most Talked-About Friend? Someone on a list I subscribe to used it to
refer to his gay lover, but didn't expand it.

MounTain Bike. (Bike here in the sense of bicycle.) The initialism works
in a lot of European languages, since
the cognates of both words are widely used. The same order is used in Spanish, French, and
Italian, despite the fact that the order BMT would make more sense if the
expansion were translated. Why does German also use MTB, despite the fact that
German uses Berg instead of a cognate of mountain? I'm not going
to dignify that with an answer.

In Spanish, the English term mountain bike has been borrowed as two
words. In German, the term has been borrowed and naturalized by removal of the
space (and by capitalization, of course): Mountainbike. I shouldn't be,
but I'm amused by the regular construct Mountainbikefest.

MTBE

Methyl Ter-Butyl Ether. A gasoline additive. Here's some info from the WSPA (Western States
Petroleum Association). The ether group increases the oxygen concentration
(from about zero in ordinary fuel itself) and promotes complete burning
(decreasing the CO/CO2 ratio). Gasoline adulterated with MTBE is
sometimes called oxygenated gasoline. The EPA has
been requiring (it's called ``administrative law'') oxygenated gasoline (and
diesel) in areas that were failing to meet clean-air targets. The
Los Angeles area, for example. In metropolitan Phoenix
(at least when I lived there, until 1990), oxygenated fuel was required only
during the summer months, when the air pollution problem was worse).

Many people complain that they get lower gas mileage with oxygenated fuel. I
have no idea of the magnitude or sign of the effect. Well, I do have a clue.
A few Iowa State Fairs ago, I drove from Indiana to Colorado and back.
In some of the states I drove through, you actually had the option of buying
gasoline with or without extra oxygenation. In most places, ordinary fuel was
priced higher, though in the Denver area the MTBE'ed fuel was more expensive.
Both of these trends seem consistent with MTBE lowering gas mileage.

MTBE has also been used as an octane
enhancer, but that effect is factored into the octane rating at the pump, so
it's not as if you get a higher effective octane rating with oxygenated fuel of
the same stated octane level.

Two-stroke engines exhaust a large fraction of their fuel unburned (as much as
a quarter in the cheapest and oldest models), and are the common power plant
for jet skis and outboard motors. Research shows that this increases the MTBE
levels in recreation lakes at the time of major holidays and for a few days
after. Jet-ski-industry-funded ``research'' disagrees.

The problem is not restricted to recreation lakes. A small ether like MTBE
is polar and dissolves in water, unlike gasoline and most of the other things
in gasoline. (The solubility is part of the reason that MTBE levels in lakes
fall.) Also unlike a lot of other stuff in gasoline, MTBE is not broken down
by bacteria. As a result, when gasoline is spilled, MTBE is the one item that
efficiently diffuses into the ground water.

MTBE gives water a turpentine taste. That's a known effect. MTBE might be a
carcinogen. That's a guess -- I'm not sure that there is any evidence for
this. It's clearly not an especially good thing to drink, although whether the
quantities getting into the water supply are having significant health effects
is not known. In the summer of 1999, after weighing the known benefits of
decreased air pollution against the unknown dangers of water contamination, the
EPA reversed its earlier position and now wants MTBE banned in gasoline.

MTBF

Mean Time Between Failures. Mean Time Before Failure.

It is a statistical curiosity that for a Bernoulli or Poisson process,
these two times are the same. To be precise, consider a sequence of
times . . . t-2, t-1, t0, t1,
t2, . . . .
We suppose that these times were determined by a Bernoulli process.
Briefly, we assume that for any tiny time interval dt, the probability that
a failure occurs during the interval is r × dt.

Thus, if we start a timer from any given moment (whether or not a failure
has just occurred and been repaired or not is immaterial: the Bernoulli
process has no memory), then the probability that the timer can run for a
finite time interval t with no failure occurring is exp(-rt), giving a
mean time before failure of 1/r. The counter-intuitive nature of the
Bernoulli process lies in the constancy of this number: If, at time zero,
the mean time before failure is 1/r, and we happen to experience a time
interval T during which no failure occurs, then we intuitively expect
the mean time to the next failure to decrease, perhaps to 1/r - T. The
fact that the process is probabilistic implies that T will sometimes
exceed 1/r, so that hypothetical formula, which would predict a negative
expectation of a positive quantity, is clearly wrong. The source of the
problem lies in our quotidian experience of probability. If the failure
is one of human health, then we might take the ``mean time to failure'' as
the life expectancy. If the life expectancy at 30 is 45, then we surely
do not expect that the life expectancy at 75 still to be 45. We expect
more like zero, which is closer to the truth. In general, though, life
expectancy decreases less rapidly than one year per year. In some age ranges
it can stay nearly constant or actually increase, as a cohort passes
through a dangerous period (first year of birth) or through a filter
interval that takes the unhealthy (the seventies is such a period) in an
inhomogeneous population. Gamblers reckon with intuition that they
may be ``overdue'' for luck to go their way.

Returning to the general problem formulated in a sequence of times, it is
clear that if we number the sequence of failures so that
t0 is the last failure before the time zero, and
t1 is the first failure after the time zero, then
the mean time before failure from time zero is
<t1> = 1/r, and similarly
the mean time elapsed since the last failure before time zero is
-<t0> = 1/r.
The mean time between failures
#0 and #1 is < t1 - t0 >.
Why can't we just say that
< t1 - t0 >
=
< t1 > - < t0 >
= 1/r - (-1/r) = 2/r ? It seems that the mean time between failures is
really 2/r, twice the mean time to failure (measured from any arbitrarily
determined moment).

The problem is that the numbering of the failure-time sequence introduces
a correlation between different times; we enter the domain of order
statistics. To see the problem, we first ignore the condition established
to assign numbers to the failures. There is a probability distribution function for
t1 - t0 : We write the probability
that t1 - t0 falls in the interval
t < t1 - t0 < t + dt as
P10(t) dt. Well bully for you, you caught me with
my pants down. I haven't finished writing the entry yet. Gimme a break.

MTBI

Mean Time Between Incidents.

MTBPR

Mean Time Between Part Replacements.

MTBR

Mean Time Between Repairs. This is a stealth pun. See, however,
comments at MTTR.

MTBSI

Mean Time Between System Interruptions.

MTC

Manhattan Theatre Club. An Off-Broadway institution, although as a matter
of geographic fact, it took over the newly restored Biltmore Theatre on
Broadway in autumn 2003.

Apparently Nemesis prefers Off-Broadway companies to stay off Broadway. The
very first production at the Biltmore, Richard Greenberg's new play ``The
Violet Hour,'' suffered two actress defections, one rather late. Laura Benanti
left during September rehearsals because of ``artistic differences,'' according
to MTC. (Benanti was replaced by Dagmara Dominczyk.) Jasmine Guy quit during
an intermission of a preview performance, less than two weeks before the
November 6 opening (her understudy, Robin Miles, took over the role).

On December 3, 2003, during rehearsals for Neil Simon's ``Rose's Dilemma,'' Mary Tyler Moore (``Rose'') was seen storming out the
backstage door minutes before the 2 p.m. curtain. This was apparently her
reaction to a letter from Neil Simon demanding that she learn her lines.
Everyone involved made a public expression of deep and undying love and
admiration for everyone else involved, or at least refrained from getting
personally nasty. Patricia Hodges, Moore's understudy, was named the new lead.
The play previewed for theater critics as scheduled on December 12, ahead of
the official opening on December 18.

There were conflicting reports regarding the precise circumstances of MTM's
departure. One uncredited report published by the Press Association (and
slightly garbled by the Sunday Telegraph) claimed that Simon's letter,
hand-delivered by his wife, actress Elaine Joyce, was an ultimatum
``apparently demanding that she learn her lines `or get out of my
play'.'' [Emphasis added by me. I mean, you don't expect italics in wire
stories, do you?]
Her publicist Mara Buxbaum said in a statement that her feelings were badly
hurt and that ``Mary has been working tirelessly for months but feels pushed
out of this production.'' [My italics again.] Simon made no public
comment until the 12th, when he implied that his letter had been sent the day
before MTM stormed out, and claimed that he had threatened that he would
leave the play if she didn't learn her lines. Simon's description of the
letter's contents seems to better explain Buxbaum's ``feels pushed out''
wording than does the original apparently inferential report of the letter's
contents.

Although MTM's best-known work has been on television, which has a smaller
burden of memorization, she has done ``legit'' theater. Her most recent stage
performance in New York City was in the 1988 Broadway production of A.R.
Gurney's ``Sweet Sue.'' She also acted in a 1966 musical version of
``Breakfast at Tiffany's,'' (1966), which closed in previews, and in ``Whose
Life Is It, Anyway?'' (1980), which ran for 96 performances. Her appearance in
``Rose's Dilemma,'' Neil Simon's 33rd play, would have marked her Off-Broadway
debut.

Neil Simon, like many other playwrights, is known to make extensive changes in
plays that he feels are not working. Anonymous informants all seem to agree
that the play wasn't getting the laughs he was aiming for, and that he had been
making substantial revisions. You know, Simon isn't director for the play. If
he hadn't been making substantial revisions, his threat to leave would have
been rather empty. Before MTM left, the premiere had been pushed back from an
originally scheduled date of December 9.

``Rose's Dilemma'' was first staged in February 2003 at the Geffen Playhouse in
LA. Its title there was ``Rose and Walsh,'' starring Jane Alexander and Len
Cariou in the title roles. In a Variety review, Phil Gallo wrote that
it ``could well see extended runs anywhere it's staged --- even Broadway.''
(In the move to New York, almost everyone was replaced. David Esbjornson, the
play's director at the Geffen, was replaced by Lynne Meadow, artistic director
at MTC. One of the four actors stayed with the production -- David Aaron
Baker, in the role of Clancy, a young writer.)

``Rose'' is a play à clef based on the relationship of Dashiell Hammett
(Walsh) and Lillian Hellman (Rose). Walsh, dead five years but visible to Rose
and the audience, wants to give up the ghost -- leave his old haunts -- in two
weeks. He reveals to Rose the location of his unfinished manuscript (``Mexican
Standoff'') that needs a final chapter of 40 pages, and which will assure her
financial security. If you know the styles of Hammett and Hellman, you realize
that Rose can as easily finish this work as Mother Goose can finish the report
of a chemical analysis. The ghost of Walsh recommends that that last chapter
be ghosted by Clancy, author of a book Walsh found in his robe pocket. The
basic problem with the original play, and probably the problem in New York, was
getting the premise established. The initial going was slow.

There are elements in this play of Neil Simon's ``Jake's Women.'' Jake is a
writer who has imaginary conversations with seven women in his life -- just a
little bit like the Eagles' Glenn Frey singing ``Take It Easy.'' (One of
Jake's imaginary interlocutors is his first wife -- who died young, like
Simon's.)

Just for laughs, let's refocus on the head term. It contains the word
Manhattan. One of the main reasons that people have been saying that
theatre is dying in New York is that it costs a fortune to put on a show.
That's probably a major reason why it really is dying. Hence, the only shows
that get a chance on Broadway are perceived sure things. If costs could be
reduced, more people might attend (the market for
entertainment can't be too weird) and there would be more variety in plays,
appealing to a broader potential audience. Why not New Jersey? Hey -- the
Meadowlands sports complex worked out. (See NJSEA.)

Mother-To-Child Prevention. Treatment focused on preventing a child from
being infected with the mother's disease, particularly
AIDS. Probably in correlation with their attitude
to abortion, people may or not feel that in principle, a word like
``prospective'' should precede ``child'' and sometimes ``mother'' in the
preceding.

Many people working in the field are very fussy about distinguishing between
HIV infection and AIDS,
at least in public. People who are HIV-positive
but asymptomatic are PLHIV, in a currently favored
acronym. But in practice, when speaking of transmission, I notice people tend
not to speak of ``passing the measles virus.''

Not only is this intellectual terrain mined with shibboleths, but the term MTCP
itself seems squeamishly to avoid naming what it is one wants to prevent. [At
three removes! One wants to prevent transmission (1) of an agent (2) that
causes a disease (3).] It suggests that ``mother-to-child'' itself might be a
thing one wants to prevent. There's good news on this: an alternative term,
the acronym PMTCT (Prevention of
MTCT (below), is gaining in popularity.

MTCT

Mother-To-Child Transmission. Transmission of disease from a woman to her
fetus. A term especially common among epidemiologists and others concerned
with HIV/AIDS.
There is also a term PMTCT (Prevention of MTCT),
which may now be more common than its synonym MTCP.
This is good news, at least because MTCP and MTCT are hard to distinguish in
speech.

MTD

Maximally Tolerated Dose. That's the expansion I've seen in books, but
it's obviously nonsense. In most cases where you'd want to know the MTD, the
dose that would be tolerated maximally, or best, would be zero. In practice,
MTD really means maximum tolerated dose.

MTE

Multi-Training Exercise. Military usage.

MTF

Mean Time to Failure. Or Median Time to Failure. Usually,
if anyone is taking the concept seriously enough to determine MTF from
empirical data, median is meant. It's always faster, and usually
much faster, to find out how long it takes for half of a set of devices
to fail, than to wait around to see how long each one lasts and take an
average.

Status as of October 2004: there have been a few demonstration successes
against mortars and rockets. The most recent tests were against ``mortar
rounds and mortar rounds fired in a salvo'' on August 24. Test conditions have
never been very stringent and there are many doubts about the system's
effectiveness in a real-world ``test.'' The system is considered bulky and not
really very ``M.'' Needless to say, it's very expensive. Deployment is not
expected before 2009.

Oh, all right. THEL stands for Tactical High-Energy Laser. In the context of
missile systems, tactical is almost a synonym of mobile, and THEL
seems to be used interchangeably with MTHEL and M-THEL.

Mary Tyler Moore. Also the production company started for her eponymous
and fondly remembered show. Their logo was a parody of the MGM lion and featured a kitten. Mary Tyler Moore
earlier costarred as Dick's wife on the
Dick Van Dyke Show.

Materials Test Reactor. A high-flux nuclear reactor for rapid testing of
materials in a high-radiation environment. Construction of an MTR was first
authorized by the AEC in 1948.

The Science and Engineering of Nuclear Power (Cambridge, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley, 1947), edited by Clark Goodman, was written with the purpose of
``present[ing] the fundamentals of chain-reacting systems in terms that are
understandable to the non-specialist, particularly to engineers interested in
the industrial applications of nuclear energy. Progress in this field requires
the coordinated effort of many branches of science and engineering,
particularly during the next several years. Gradually, the responsibility will
devolve to a new breed of specialists, already dubbed nuclear
engineers.'' (Quoted text from Clark's preface.)
Chapter 10, ``Heat Transfer,'' is by E.R. Gilliland, a rare engineer among
scientists. He even provides a short table of conversions between engineering
units (you know: good ol' Btu, feet,
°F) and,
uh, other units. He comments drily (p. 323):

In removing heat from a reactor, there are a number of
considerations, but to an engineer, the chief one appears to be that the
physicist prefers that he keep his equipment out of the reactor. Apparently,
nearly any material used in the reactor is objectionable. If a gas like helium
is used, while not objectionable from its nuclear properties, it is not a good
moderator and hence increases the size of the reactor. Many of the liquids
require structural materials for the passages through which they flow that are
objectionable in thermal reactors.

Mts.

MounTainS. Plural of Mt. Typically occurs in
the names of mountain ranges.

Median Time To Fail[ure]. Or Mean Time ... Some authors try to use
the two acronyms MTTF and MTF (q.v., please)
to distinguish the two: I've seen MTF for median and MTTF for mean in the same
paper, but this distinction is inherently unstable and unmemorable.

MTTR

Mean Time To Repair.

The usual formula for computing how long a task will take is to start with
the amount of time it should take, multiply by two, and switch to the
next, larger unit of time measure. (Forget fortnights. If it should take
a week it'll take two months. Relax, it was ever thus.)

Not that anyone is taking this concept very seriously, but median time
would be a lot more meaningful than mean time. After all, we know there are
repairs which will never occur (this is too often intentional), for which a
time is problematical to define at best, and infinite at worst. Thus, the
Mean TTR is correspondingly problematical or infinite, while the median
is unaffected by odd stuff at the edges of the probability distribution. Now
you understand why the simple arithmetical average is called ``mean.''
[Actually, the real etymology is interesting too: mean, like French
moyen meant `common, middle' and followed the downward path of the
word vulgar in common usage. See villein
entry for similar story.]

Music TeleVision. It was originally a
single cable channel showing rock videos. They've
since spun off MTV2 and VH1, and own CMT,
TNN, Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite, and right of first
refusal on your eyeballs, so now MTV stands both for the company and for one of
its channels. The prime-time programming on their flagship
channel nowadays is more than 50% puerile game shows, reruns, and other dross,
instead of music videos, the original dross.

MTX

MethoTreXate.

MTZ

Mass Transfer Zone. Nothing to do with bus transfers or mass transit.

MU

Marginal Utility. The rate of change of total utility (TU). MU is defined as the slope or derivative of the
TU, or as the change in TU from the smallest unit change in consumption (of
one of the goods that TU is a function of). For an out-of-left-field
discussion of how consumption demand is determined by marginal utility
rather than total utility, see this sequence of postings:
(1)
(2)
(3)
as well as this offlist comment

Multiple-Unit. Designates a system of railways and streetcars in which a
single set of controls actuates two or more diesel or electric locomotives or
power cars, with only control and not power cables connecting the units. When
the motors so controlled are on passenger cars and not separate locomotives,
the term DMU or
EMU, as applicable, is used for each car in the
train.

MUA

Mail User Agent. Passes mail between user and an
MTA. The rest of this entry is obsolete, unless
your computer is too.

You can also use the MUA built into
Netscape. Beware, however: if you're using Unix, you're quite
possibly allowing many of your emails to accumulate in the system mail
spooler, rather than saving them onto your own disk space (in mailx,
you do this by PREserving the file rather than explicitly saving it
into a mail folder or allowing it to be saved into a default mailbox
like ~/mbox). Netscape, oriented as it is to a personal computer
community that retrieves mail before it can read it (typically using
POP) will download your possibly bloated
mailbox on the system mail spool (i.e., the mailserver's disk space,
/var/spool/ say) before you know what hit you. I wouldn't want to be
around to see what happens if you go over quota or exceed disk space
as Netscape tries to download. On the bright side, Netscape doesn't
use some dog-Am proprietary format to store mails in mailboxes, so
after you run this experiment, assuming you have the disk space to
survive it, you can go back to using an honest-to-God Unix application
to read your mail, including the stuff hidden in .netscape/ .
Just a word to the wise.

Eudora.
This comes in Lite and full-feature versions; the full-feature
versions have ``filters'' for automatically sending certain
mail to the garbage. This works like a killfile for a
newsreader. I recommend Eudora because I never hear complaints
about it, have some long-ago satisfactory personal experience
with it, and I do hear complaints about Netscape and
especially about the MS products. As of June 2002, you
can download Eudora Pro and pay $40 to use it or else have an
ad appear. Alternatively, you can use Eudora Lite for free.
It's named after Eudora Welty (really), so what more could you
want? (Eudora Welty's story ``Why I Live At The P.O.'' was
published in 1941; Eudora the MUA uses POP. The name Eudora is
derived from Greek roots meaning `good gift'; the Eudora Lite
version is free.)

Pegasus Mail. This seems to be an older product than
Eudora, and not as popular. For all I know it may be just as
good as Eudora.

Netscape (Mailer/Messenger)
[identified as ``Mozilla'' in headers]. Not recommended.
See
this document.

Montreal Urban Community Transit Corporation. This was the English
name of the STCUM before it became politically
incorrect to have one. Conceivably, Montreal may have been written
Montréal, though it's not likely to have been pronounced that way.

MultiUser Domain. Also ``Multiple User Dungeon,'' and ``... Dimension.''
There are some
FAQ's for MUD's from Usenet newsgroup <rec.games.mud>, maintained
by Jennifer "Moira" Smith, who has a
homepage with a link to the
evil green ribbon conspiracy. Cf.MOO.

Housman's ``Fragment'' parodies English translations of Ancient Greek that are
awkward and worse, and also parodies a Greek predilection for metaphor.
Housman's phrase was suggested by some words in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus (at
494f; speech that different editors have assigned to either Clytemnestra or
the chorus):
kasis / pêlou xunouros dipsia konis (`the dust, dry sister of the
mire,' in Lattimore's translation). In Housman's parody, mud's sister is
clearly also dried mud:

Of course, out of context it obviously makes a wonderful
dysphemism-as-over-the-top-euphemism for merde.

There are many online copies of Housman's parody, though they probably
represent very few original transcriptions of the published work. (Besides the
copy linked above, here are three URL's that have stood the test of time:
1,
2, and 3.)
The online versions I've seen all give it the title ``Fragment of a Greek
Tragedy,'' but the Encyclopedia Britannica is careful (or careless --
I'm not sure which, yet) to give the title with an initial article ``A.'' That
is the usual style for new fragments as published in philology journals, and
would be appropriate for a parody. The version (from Trinity Magazine,
see below) published in Housman's Collected Poems and Selected Prose
(Penguin, 1988) uses the shorter title, but that does not entirely settle the
question. Please don your dustmask now.

Housman (1859-1936) wrote ``Fragment'' in 1883, and it appeared June 8 of that
year in the Bromsgrovian, a publication of King Edward the Sixth Grammar
School, Bromsgrove. [That was where he got his secondary education. He also
retreated to Bromsgrove in 1882 after an initially promising undergraduate
career at St. John's College (Oxford) ended disappointingly. By December 1882
he was working at the Patent Office in London.] Housman reentered academia as
a professor of Latin at University College, London, in 1892; the circumstances
have been widely retailed. ``Fragment'' was republished by the University
College Gazette in 1897, the year after Housman published A Shropshire
Lad at his own expense. (Sales of the latter were initially slow, but they
picked up by the time of the Boer War, and during
WWI it became enormously popular). Cornhill
Magazine republished ``Fragment'' in April 1901. Housman moved to Trinity
College, Cambridge, in 1911, and Trinity Magazine republished
``Fragment'' in February 1921. Housman remained at Trinity until his death in
1936, but for some reason Yale Review republished the parody in 1928.
It went on being republished.

Housman made a considerable revisions for the second (Cornhill) and
third (Trinity) publications. In 1927, when Wilbur Cross asked
permission for the Yale Review to republish ``Fragment,'' Housman
(referring to it by the no-``A'' version of the title) turned down the offer of
an honorarium but asked to have a chance to correct the proofs. He also
mentioned that he didn't have a copy, but suggested that Cross could find it in
Cornhill. When YR did publish it, ``recent changes'' by the author were
vaguely mentioned. Interestingly, or perhaps not, apart from a couple of
misprints the YR version coincided with the third (Trinity) version,
but with the punctuation of the second (Cornhill). (This is by report.
If and when I have a look at the Cornhill and, conceivably, the
Bromsgrovian, I'll be able to pronounce on the title.)

Multicultural. Expressing a diversity of moving personal testimonies of
oppression and victimization that lead to a perfect ideological homogeneity.

multiplication

I was inspired to enter this entry in the glossary by the character of
Marie, who can add and multiply but not subtract (see
40). Of course, you remember the one about Noah.
(Bear with me, it gets better.)

In case you had a deprived childhood: after Noah opened the ark (or was it the
arc?) he told the animals to go forth and multiply. One pair of snakes
protested, ``We're adders -- we can't multiply!'' Nevertheless,
some time later they came back with a bunch of little snakelets or adderlets or
7483's or whatever they're called, and Noah asked
how they did it. ``We used logs.''

Oh! I just knew I'd told that one before. See the etymologically
interesting adder entry.

Someone else who really couldn't multiply was
Samuel Pepys. He and his dear young wife never
had children. The
very first entry of his diary mentions that his wife had given him ``hopes
of her being with child,'' hopes disappointed the previous day. Hmm.
Okay, that was pretty limp. Coming after the snake pun, it was the pits. I
can do better than that if I try.

multiplication table

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) said

There is no national science just as there is no national
multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.

Maharashi University of Management. It's
situated in Fairfield, Iowa, but that's just like -- you know -- in the real
world. That's not where it's at. Relevant information concerning Iowa can be
found in the Dax entry. MUM is pronounced ``mum.''
Maybe it ought to be pronounced ``mmmmmmmmmm ommmm.'' In England ``mum''
means ``mom.'' This is called recherché. Of course, if I hadn't
already known it, it would have been recherche.

Why is it appropriate, you ask? Because they restrict students' political
speech in ways that are not merely immoral but absurdly so. Read about it
in
this George F. Will column of October 25, 2007. It's about a student who
was removed from his unexalted position as a student senator in the
ASUM because he spent a penny per voter more than
was allowed during the campaign. (If the link dies,
let me know and I'll summarize more here.)

The initialism common on the university's own pages is the inferior and
ambiguous UM. Maybe we could compromise on the filled
pause, UMM?

Model United Nations. The presence of their
acronym expansions here can not be taken as an endorsement of the MUN or
of the UN.

mung, MUNG

Modify, esp. destructively. Once expressed something done to a data file.
Now often used to describe the action of modifying an email address to prevent
its automatic harvesting for spam purposes (see
spam trap).

The etymology of mung is uncertain. The cluster of meanings represented
by French manger, Italian mangiare, English munch and
mange represents one obvious possibility, but would imply a ``soft gee''
and a spelling like munge.
An alternative that gives the right consonant
is derivation from a past-tense form of the verb ming (now
mingle).

By 1960 at MIT, the word had become a backronym, with imputed expansion Mash Until No
Good. Later, the XARAMUNG Until No Good
became popular.

The information that is both in the mung
entry of the Jargon File (version 4.4.7) and in this entry is from the
former. The OED2 does not give any hackish senses,
but its examples suggest that the old word mung, in senses related to
mingle, had not been an entirely obscure word in the US as the computer
era began.

mung bean

The mung bean, or mung, is a leguminous plant
with light-green seeds, widely cultivated in tropical Asia. One educated
Taiwanese told me that it is considered one of the kinds of rice. It is grown
as a pulse (you need to read this entry) in South
Asia, and also as green fodder. Also, the food sold as
``bean sprouts'' is the sprouts of mung bean.

Multidisciplinary is very fashionable in government research funding
these days, and they're getting increasingly serious about it: they don't
want a bunch of Lone Rangers who only meet at funding reviews.

muriatic acid

Commercial name of hydrochloric acid
[HCl(aq)]. The name comes from the
Latinmuriaticus, `pickled in brine,' from
muria, `brine,' which is not independently attested in other languages.

`Mouse' in Latin. The English word mouse
is not derived from Latin mus or Greek mûs, but is simply a
cognate going back through proto-Germanic (like German Maus) to an
Indo-European root. Cognates are found in Slavic languages and Armenian.

The diminutive Latin form musculus is also the basis of words for
muscle, mussel, shoulder, and thigh in various Romance and Germanic languages.
Some Romance languages also preserve the root for an animal name (French
mouche) and some don't. Spanish uses the
word ratón. This is puzzling because it looks like an
augmentative form of rata, `rat.' I would presume that the -on
in ratón is related to the identical French and Occitan
diminutive ending (cf.aileron and lumignon), but
Corominas y Pascual prefer more
complicated explanations.

Mus

Musca.
Official IAU abbreviation
for the constellation.
Musca is Latin for `fly,' the common insect;
mus is Latin for `mouse,' the common rodent.
Spanish `fly' is mosca; Spanish fly isn't.

MUSAC

MUltipoint Switching And Conferencing unit. Term coined by Siemens,
a German company. Name is uncomfortably reminiscent of Muzak, which looks like German.

A Mexico City museum founded in 2010. The literal translation `Museum of
the Object of the Object' corresponds fairly accurately. The
Spanish nouns ``objeto, objetivo,
propósito'' stand in similar semantic relationships to ``object,
objective, purpose.'' In particular, appropriate contexts make the first word
equivalent to the other two. A propósito [`By the way, À
propos'], ``appropriate contexts'' tend not to include highly idiomatic
expressions.

The name (Museo del Objeto del Objeto) is somewhat clever, but it'd've
been cleverer had it been accurate. One motivation for choosing the name is
that it makes an apparent backronym -- MODO. I
haven't written that entry yet.

Intertextuality is pervasive in
music, even overwhelming. Fortunately, we have very few entries that involve
references (in music or not) to music or things musical. The only ones I can
track down right now are

Okay, here's another musical reference, of a sort similar to those described in
the Day Tripper entry: at the end of the Traffic's ``Dear Mr. Fantasy'' (at the
end of a standard studio version that appears in some album) the
guitars start doing some power-chord riffs from
the Moody Blues song ``Ride My See-Saw.''

music font

A ``music font,'' as the term is used on the internet, does not refer to a
special symbol font for writing clefs, notes, joins, pauses, etc. Instead, it
generally refers to fonts of ordinary characters stylized for use on album
covers and such. Dang.

music for snorkeling

(BTW, don't wear headphones in the water.
There are more certain ways to commit suicide. More below.) Now the list:

Johnny Legend's ``All Of Me.'' (More at the
link.) (Really, that's the better entry. You might as well follow the link
now.)

Duncan Sheik's ``Barely Breathing.'' This song mentions salt water in a
technical way and takes note of the problem with going deep: ``I can't find the
air.'' The video features a face pressed up against a small glass window, but
the video was not recorded under water, like the one for Johnny Legend's song.

Sara Bareilles's ``Love Song,'' which is not a love song. People claim it's a
musical reply to her record company, since she was asked to come up with a love
song for her album. The song was a hit, so I'm sure the record company is
satisfied, but the song is really about snorkeling. It begins ``Head under
water / And they tell me to breathe easy for a while.''

Doubtless there are whole albumsful of
snorkeling songs. The above are just the ones
that have come to mind in the last few years.

If you plan to listen to any of these using electronic sound reproduction
equipment, wait until you're back on dry land. Water conducts (come back
some day and read the future torpedo entry), and it's hard to hum along in
noseplugs and mouthpiece, to say nothing of a shroud.

The relevance of water saltiness, although Sheik does not sing the details, is
that dissolved salt makes water denser, and thus makes a swimmer more buoyant.
Counterweights are thus necessary for snorkeling in it, and the song is
appropriately downbeat. (Salt water is also a better conductor of
electricity.) I remember that my tenth-grade English teacher (the second one,
after my dad had me removed from Honors English), Mr. O_________, criticized me
for using an extended simile involving water waves, crushing youthful literary
aspirations I didn't even have, but it didn't involve punning, and anyway he
(Mr. O) also insisted that it was Aristotle and not Democritus or anyone else
who came up with the idea of atoms, which shows how much he knew, but I don't
recall his ever criticizing my extended run-on sentences, but then again maybe
that stands to reason. Whatever. Getting back to the subject: when I finish
the item on burping the alphabet, I'll link to it from here.

music to celebrate a tornado

Just to be clear and explicit, or at least explicit: many kinds of music
are appropriate to celebrate that a tornado has passed, but not all songs
celebrate that a tornado has passed at all. Pharrell Williams's song ``Happy''
is in the second category. It begins by conceding the apparent incongruity of
being happy in the circumstances: ``It might seem crazy what I'm 'bout to
say....'' But the chorus affirms ``Because I'm happy...
Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.''

Celebration of tornadoes is a perennial theme in popular music. Lionel
Richie's 1986 hit, ``Dancing On The Ceiling,'' also asks listeners to clap
their hands. What goes around comes around, pretty fast. But the Macklemore
and Ryan Lewis hit, ``Can't Hold Us'' -- the one which features Ray Dalton
singing ``So we put our hands up like the ceiling can't hold us'' -- celebrates
earthquakes and not tornadoes. That's obviously the reason why the official
video has a seaplane and a camel. (A plane is a safe place to be
during an earthquake, but landing strips may be damaged. And being trapped in
the rubble of a collapsed tent is fairly survivable.)

A ``neat little word'' coined by Albert Ellis, according to Dr. Wayne W. Dyer.
(See F.O.O.L.) Apparently Ellis and Dyer agree
that musterbation is a bad thing. That's strange -- I thought it was
supposed to be natural and ... oh sorry, that was the other word.

Okay, more precisely, so far as I can determine from Dyer's book (at pp.
148-9), musterbation is the inappropriate acceptance of obligations that others
somehow impose. This is not Dyer's wording, because his book would have made a
short pamphlet if he had preferred clear sentences to unclear paragraphs. It
also makes explicit, in the word inappropriate, the presence of at least
one unexamined notion. Acceptance of societal norms is not always
inappropriate or self-abnegating. And musterbation isn't a ``little'' word,
either.

Mut

German: `courage.' A noun that is masculine.
(You know the etymology of virtue, right? Good.
No -- I mean, you know what I mean.)

Some other German words ending in -ut that have a close cognate in English are
Blut, Flut, gut, and Hut. The cognates are blood, flood,
good, and hood, although in the last case a better translation is
usually `hat.'

German Mut is cognate with English mood. The semantic
relationship is clearer if you consider that mood has meanings similar
to spirit, and that you may en-courage someone by saying ``have some
spirit!'' Or, failing that, ``have some spirits!'' Which reminds me, you need
to reread this CCC entry.

Getting back to the hood/Hut thing. Let me briefly clarify that
-hood in English words like brotherhood and neighborhood
is unrelated; it's cognate with the German noun-forming suffix -heit
(and later also -keit). The hatHut is more interesting.
With a change to feminine gender it becomes an elevated term with meanings
related to `protection.' But back to the concrete Hut, indicated by the
masculine gender: I won't tell you what a Panamahut is, but
Strohhut and Zylinderhut are `straw hat' and `top hat.' A
Fingerhut is a...

(Giving you some space to guess here.)
(Come on, play along!)
(Time!)

`thimble.' And of course, Handschuh is `glove.' It's not just
clothing; the Germans seem to have a certain attitude about bodily extremities.
The word Bein means `leg.' It's cognate with the English word
bone. (Actually, this isn't very innovative. There's evidence that the
word always had a narrower sense of `shank,' which was lost in English.)

mutual bitter recrimination

The attractive feature of this form of debate is that... Hmmm. I was
going to say that you're virtually assured that at least one side is right,
but I guess that's only true if the discussion rises to the level of abstract
mud-slinging.

mutual respect

Bilateral hypocrisy.

MUX, Mux, mux

MUltipleXer, MUltipleXing. A mux is often seen travelling in the company
of its confederate, the demux, since parties like
to receive as well as send. That combination is called a mux for short or more
precisely a...

mux/demux, MUX/DEMUX

MUltipleXer/DEMUltipleXer pair.

I should probably say a little about what multiplexing is. The action
involves multiple distinct signals that must be bandwidth-limited. For
example, because the human ear is insensitive to continuous signals at pitches
above 20 kHz, it is possible to apply a low-pass filter (filter out all
frequencies above fLP) to any sound and produce a signal that
is not audibly distinguishable from the original (to some degree, any recording
or transducing device will filter anyway). If this signal is modulated
by a constant frequency fM, then the
resulting signal occupies the frequency range
(fM-fLP,fM+fLP).
Multiple signals can be modulated by different modulating frequencies
(typically integer multiples of some fM). So long as each of
the modulating frequencies differs by more than 2fLP, the
modulated signals occupy non-overlapping frequency regions. These signals can
be added together and transmitted together on a channel with a broader
bandwidth, and the original signals reconstructed by demodulating the component
signals.

Eventually, I'll probably add some words to make clear what I mean by
``modulate,'' but for now I want to mention that in practice, telephones
economize bandwidth by using a tight low-pass filter -- chopping frequencies
higher than 3000 or 5000 Hz, say. This allows the company to multiplex more
signals into one channel, but it also means that the sounds ess and eff are
virtually indistinguishable over the phone. (It's actually a band-pass filter:
very low frequencies are also filtered out. For obvious reasons they also
filter out any signal at the frequency of ordinary power supply -- 50 or 60 Hz,
in most places -- even more strongly than they would be filtered out just from
being on the fall-off of the band-pass.)

Muzak

Elevator music.

An inhabitant of a region on the New
Jersey side of the Hudson River around about Fort Lee, as
illustrated on the New Yorker cover for December 10, 2001 (``New Yorkistan,''
by Maira Kalman & Rick Meyerowitz).

A loan word from Russian. Originally, it (and moujik) meant only
`peasant.' (Actually, one of my Russian-English dictionaries says it meant
and means `Russian peasant.' I take that as an accident of usage.) Now the
more common sense of the word ranges from `strong man' and `macho' to `fellow,
buddy.' The classic image of a muzhik is a strong guy holding a
kettlebell at shoulder level, the weight
resting on his forearm. It looks like the approved style for one-handed
self-administered whisky-from-a-jug. (In English, of course, only the
strong-man acception is common.) The notion that peasants are stronger than
city folk is widespread and not entirely unreasonable.

There's an old Russian saying that what is healthy to a Russian is deadly to a
German. The form with the nationalities switched is also common, but less so.

MV

Productive infix and suffix for IBM-3000 series
machine names. E.g., the IBM 3081 mainframe at UB (University at
Buffalo) is (or was, by now, I imagine) <ubvm.buffalo.edu>. Also
MVS, as in uokmvsa at the University of Oklahoma (in
Norman). I guess em and vee stand for machine and virtual, but VM was already
taken by Digital; but I don't know.

.mv

(Domain name code for) Maldives.

Maldives is the smallest member of the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC). The
UNDP has a human development index used to rank
countries on the basis of things like life expectancy, education, and income.
In 1996, Maldives's six partners in SAARC were ranked from 89 (Sri Lanka) up
(or maybe down: Pakistan: 134, India: 135 -- was
this close match cooked?, Bangladesh: 143,
Nepal: 151, and
Bhutan, 158). Wasn't Maldives even ranked? No matter. In Havana on September
6, 1979, Maldives President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom addressed the sixth conference
of the Nonaligned Movement (NAM) in these words:

Ours is a small country in relation to the majority of the countries that are
represented here. We may lack numbers; we may lack in material wealth; we may
lack in technological advancement; in fact, we may lack in many of the material
criteria by which progress is measured in the present-day world.

He also said other stuff. Speaking as he did is called ``setting yourself
up'' or ``asking for it.''

MV

Materialized View.

MV

Postal code for Mecklenburg-West Pomerania (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
in German), one of the sixteen states (Länder) of the German
Federal Republic (FRG). [Like most of the country
information in this glossary, Germany's is at the entry for its domain code --
.de in this instance.] The area of MV is 23,170 sq.
km., and its population was estimated at 1,816,000 for 1997. The same state,
under the name Mecklenburg, was part of the old East Germany. East Pomerania
was absorbed into Poland at the end of WWII. The
capital of the state, through various forms of government, has been and
continues to be Schwerin.

The name Mecklenburg basically means `great fortress.' Burg means
`fortress,' though it seems to get conflated with berg (`mountain').
The adjective part of the name comes from the Old High German root
michil, `big,' as in the old English expression ``mickle and pickle''
(big and small). Hence also the extant expression, ``Many a pickle makes a
mickle.'' There seem to have been cognates of mickle in most of the
Germanic languages, and English is, typically, unusual in having lost the
original form. Maybe it lost twice. The High German form, borrowed northward,
seems to come from an ancient borrowing through Gothic of the Greek
megalo-, lengthened stem form of mégas. The root is
widely represented in Indo-European languages, including that outlier Hittite.
The Latin reflex is magnus. So what English
lost once or twice it gained back at least a couple of times more.

MV

Motor Vehicle.

mv

MoVe. Name of Unix command for renaming files
and directories. If you have to move across partition or to a different
storage medium, you may need to cp (and rm at the original location), since you're not just
renaming.

Museo Archeologico
Virtuale. (Italian; calls itself
``Archaeological Virtual Museum.'') Since the initials aren't ordered according
to the Italian or English name, I suppose the arrangement is chosen to put a
vowel at the end, as almost all Italian words have, and thus suggest the
pronunciation emeva.

The site is intended, among other things, to foster a kind of virtual community
by providing free web space for those volunteering to build a relevant group of
pages.

Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association of the United States. The MVMA is
remembered today for an administrative law case -- MVMA v. State Farm Mutual
Automobile Insurance Co. -- which reached the US Supreme Court, where the MVMA
lost in 1982. The MVMA was still in existence in 1992, but eventually became
or renamed itself the AAMA (which in turn became the
AAM in 1999).

MVN

Medial Vestibular Nucleus.

MVN

Mount VernoN, Illinois. IATA code for the
airport there (Mount Vernon Outland Airport). Located within easy walking
distance of nowhere.

MVN

Multi-Valued Neuron. Neurons, as they occur in artificial neural nets, are
like logic gates. (For really biological context,
see this other MVN.) Ordinary logic gates are Boolean functions: they depend on inputs
which each take values in the domain {0,1} (or differently named but equivalent
set of cardinality 2) and yield an output in the same two-valued range.
Perceptrons and neurons generalize logic gates: they are continuous-valued
functions of multiple continuous-valued inputs. In a slight concession to
reality, the range of continuous values is compact. Typically, the domain and
range of allowed values are the unit interval or complex numbers on a unit
circle. MVN's are intermediate between these: the inputs are continuous, but
the output takes a discrete set of allowed values (e.g., the n distinct
complex nth roots of 1).

MVP

Mitral-Valve Prolapse. Not just a symptom, but a syndrome: a genetic
disorder that's a sort of much less dangerous version of Marfan's syndrome.

MVP

Most Valuable Player.

MVPhW, MVPW

Mitteilungen des Vereins Klassischer Philologen in
Wien. German classics journal no longer published -- `Contributions
of the Vienna Society of Classical Philologists.'

MVS

Multiple Virtual Storage. Operating system (OS)
for popular IBM 3000-series computers. Full name is
OS/MVS. Or MVS/ESA. Introduced in 1988.

Megawatt. This unit often reminds me of Indonesian leader
Megawati Sukarnoputri. The second name is a(n optional) patronymic in the
traditional Javanese style. It indicates that she is the daughter of Sukarno
(the first president of Indonesia). Sukarno's sons got Sukarnoputra. (Emily
Yoffe explained this stuff at
slate. (Sukarno and Sukarnoputri are also written Soekarno and
Soekarnoputri, with what seems to be slightly less frequency than the -u-
forms, and it seems that might be the offocial spelling. I'm sort of surprised
that the question could be in much doubt.)

MidWestern American
Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. ``[A] regional interdisciplinary
association, founded in 1969,'' and affiliated with ASECS. As explained on the homepage, the
organization serves ``that region of the United States described in [the
MWASECS] constitution as `west of the Allegheny Mountains, north of the Ohio
River, east of the Rocky Mountains, and south of Canada.' (Our founders
apparently took the long historical view and were skeptical of the stability of
political borders!)'' The website designer has selected to illustrate the
homepage an old map that labels the region south of the Great Lakes as
``Canada.'' [This other
location is currently (2004) equivalent to that linked from the top of
this entry.]

MidWest Conference on East Asian Thought. The Third Annual MWCEAT was
held in 2005, and there hasn't been another since. This is either because all
outstanding questions on East Asian thought were answered at that time, or
because everyone was exhausted by the ten-syllable name. They should have used
the initialism proposed by this entry.

MWD

Measurement While Drilling (instruments). Something to do with oil and gas
drilling. I wouldn't know;
ask here.
Well, okay: MWD was introduced starting in the mid-1980's. They're heavy-duty
instruments mounted around the drill string. They provide downhole data in
real time; previously, drilling had to be stopped and the drill string and bit
removed to lower-in measurement instrumentation.

Mwera

A Bantu language spoken in southern coastal Tanzania. In my personal
experience, the principal utility of this language is in permitting you to
complete the construction of a crossword that has compensatory virtues.

MWHSWM

Man Who Has Sex With Men. About as common as MWSWM (``...Who Sleeps
With..''), to judge by ghits. It's interesting,
because WWSWW is much more common than
WWHSWW. I guess men don't hang around
afterwards. MSM is the most common of the
synonymous M*M initialisms.

MWHSWW

Man Who Has Sex With Women. This acronym exists only in principle. To use
it would just be weird.

MWI

Message-Waiting Indicator.

mwm

Motif Window Manager.

MWnT

Multi-Walled NanoTub[ul]e.

M word

Contestant:

I thought it was taboo to use the M-word on a first date; she
told me how her parents met and asked me how my parents met.

You know, there are certain questions people planning to marry don't often
ask themselves, like:

What sort of stepfather will my future exwife choose for our
children?

Would I rather be married and divorced than single? How will
this affect my pick-up success?

MWP

Medieval Warm Period. A period of unusually warm weather lasting from
about the seventh century to the fourteenth.

MWPC

MultiWire Proportional Chamber. Georges Charpak won the 1992
Nobel prize in physics for inventing the MWPC in 1968. (They're also
called Charpak counters.) I was paid to wire some of these things for an
experimental elementary particles group at Rutgers in 1977 and possibly in
1978, and in 1977 I worked at the experimental sites at
Brookhaven and Fermilab.

Charpak spent his career at the École Supérieure de Physique
et Chimie and at CERN. When I was running the
data analysis programs (punch cards on CDC 6400/6600's, sonny boy, with 36-bit
words just to be slightly exotic) at Fermilab, I noticed that they were written
in Fortran with comments in
French. I don't think I ever gave much thought
to why, though practically everyone in our group was American (the one
exception I can recall was British).

These research groups are very long-lived, so the program might have been coded
locally by a Francophone who had moved on before I arrived, but it would have
been more efficient just to cadge someone else's code. At Fermilab I also met
members of a group from UC Santa Something that decided to save a few bucks on
computers by buying Data General machines (Novas?) instead of the PDP-11's that
were almost universal at Fermilab experimental sites. The result was that they
lost more in extra coding to adapt the widely shared local software than they
gained in hardware cost savings.

Oh wait, here's something: The Eleventh Pacific Rim Roman Literature Seminar was
held by the Department of Classics, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa,
18-22 June 1997. And they went back to South Africa in
2003! (University of Stellenbosch, in Stellenbosch, South Africa,
Wednesday June 25 to Saturday June 28.) I guess they wanted a point that was
roughly equidistant from all of the Pacific rim, but not in the Pacific.

Men Who Sleep With Men (for other reasons than a shortage of beds). See
MWHSWM.

MWSWW

Man Who Sleeps With Women. That's it?! Just sleeps with 'em? What
a pervert! No wonder this concept hasn't been turned into an acronym.

MX

Mail eXchange[r].

.mx

(Domain code for) Mexico.

MX

eXperimental Missile. The MX program that was news mostly during the
Carter administration just happened to have kept its designation (and of
course it never got too far off the drawing board, let alone off the ground).

The way to remember that MY stands for Malaysia and not for its neighbor
Myanmar is to think of .my and remember that internet access is illegal in
Myanmar. (Pretty much, anyway. Maybe they've had a little political thaw and
allowed people to take occasional deep breaths also. If it weren't for
countries like Myanmar, countries like Malaysia would look like dictatorships.
Hmmm.)

Googling for engine stuff in 2004, I discovered that Myanmar has an industry!
It's called PANSAR, which sounds like a Spanish
verb that would mean doing something with your belly. (La panza is
Spanish for `the belly.' The name of Don Quixote's Sancho Panza was originally
spelled Sancho Pança. The second name was pronounced then, and
is still pronounced in most of the non-Iberian Spanish-speaking world, like
Pansa.) Pansar would probably be a word for doing something
quite specific with a belly, but since the verb does not exist, it is equally
likely to be anything, such as pounding something with a belly or vice
versa, sort of like sumo wrestling. For
other Japanese belly information, see the navel exercises entry.

On second thought, there's a Spanish verb pensar, `to think.' When
you're seriously hungry, your belly does a lot of your thinking. My mother is
slowly writing her memoirs now. They involve a period when she was a refugee,
but start when she was a little Jewish girl growing up in Nazi Germany.
Concluding one early anecdote, she writes ``so you see, I was interested in
food even before it became scarce.''

The myotto of PANSAR is ``everyday in so many
ways we are part of you.'' (Rather weak Coué
imitation.) I think that one you they refer to is Yanmar Co., Ltd., a
Japanese firm. They missed a real opportunity here; they could have called it
Anmar, and then your account at the web site (please allow cookies) would be
MyAnmar! For more humorous Japanese -- oh wait, we did that already.

MY

Model Year.

My Day in Court

The title of a book by Arthur Train, published in 1939 by Charles
Scribner's Sons. An autobiography, it begins `I enjoy the dubious distinction
of being known among lawyers as a writer, and among writers as a lawyer.'' He
also writes that ``[t]hese reminiscences are in no sense an autobiography.''
The main reason for reading his books is the same as his reason for working too
many years (see p. 253) in the DA's office: it's a
good source of material.

Some of that material is finding its way into this glossary and lodging in
entries such as these:

Nitrobenzene. One of various traditional trivial names.
See the entry for essence of
mirbane.

myrbane, oil of

Nitrobenzene. One of various traditional trivial names.
See the entry for essence of
mirbane.

MyRRh's, Myrrh's

MY Regular Restaurant. (The aitch is silent. In fact, in the expansion
it's even invisible. The 's is there as a sort of grammatical restaurant
marker.) I just invented this acronym because I prefer not to identify the
specific establishment in this glossary, and also so as to have a particularly
egregious example of a backronym. MyRRh's is
not widely used in this sense. In fact, a Google search on
<<"my regular restaurant" "MyRRh">> and related
queries yield no hits.

MyRRh's is preferable to ``my regular restaurant'' not only because it's brief
and because it needlessly inconveniences or confuses glossary readers, but also
because it need not be accurate. I mean, if I were to write ``my regular
restaurant,'' I'd have to consider whether the phrase is true each time. But
MyRRh's merely stands for ``my regular restaurant.'' In the interests
of brevity, I can leave out details that might yield MyRRhULY's (``until last
year'') or MyRRhiahaU's (``in an [h] alternate universe''). But it happens to
be accurate as I write this.

MonoZygotic Twins. (``Identical'' twins: embryos, and individuals,
arising from the splitting of a single fertilized egg.) Cf.DZT.

MZTV

MuZeum of TeleVision, right? One could be forgiven for supposing so --
This is TV, after all. FWIW, however, the
MZTV Museum of Television is headed by Moses
Znaimer. ``Headed'' here does not mean that when the opponents' goalie
drop-kicked television into midfield, MZ tried to return it by bouncing it off
his head, unfortunately. Rather, it means he is ``Chairman and Executive
Producer, MZTV Museum.'' The position of ``executive producer'' is not common
among museums, but this is TV, after all. The museum's main asset is the Moses
Znaimer Collection (of superannuated TV sets and related junk). I am informed
that Moses Znaimer is a bright light of the TV firmament as seen from Toronto,
where the museum is located. He seems to be the TV-industry equivalent of an
ecotourism promoter. No general-admission hours for the museum are stated as
such (that I can find), but there are guided tours for the public between 2pm
and 4pm on weekdays. Perfect for the differently-employed.

To collect, preserve, and exhibit the World's most comprehensive collection
of North American Television Receivers, from the formative, first fifty year
period between the 1920s & 1970s. To contribute to the understanding of
the impact of television. To help tell the story of television.

Ah, yes -- where would we be without ``learning''? The new improved web site
integrates Macintoxic features (too-responsive graphics, nonstandard
codepoints for standard characters, etc.) to cleverly reproduce one of the most
characteristic features of TV: annoyance. The medium is the message, and the
message is annoying. If you want content, like information about museum hours,
follow the link for the low-bandwidth/dialup-user
site.

Full disclosure: In 1976 I went to a
Halloween party dressed as a television
(a Zenith ``portable''). It was hard to dance. The next year I obtained
superior results by dressing as a pop-up toaster and using the two-quart glass
unit from a blender as my beer stein.

The Lagoon Nebula. Vide Messier catalog (M###). Five thousand light-years away, in the
direction of the constellation Sagittarius.

M###: M1 to M110

110 Nebulae identified by Charles Messier (1730-1817), labeled in order as
they appeared
in his catalog (first edition 1781). He catalogued these fuzzy objects that
had fixed positions in space in order to speed the identification of
then-more-interesting fuzzy objects that do not: comets. It was Kant who
first suggested that nebulae might be collections of stars -- i.e.
galaxies. That is what many of them turned out to be, but in technical
usage, astronomers are trying to restrict the term to something like its
Latin meaning of `clouds.' Mark claims the
astronomers won that battle decades ago. I must have been away.